BioSensing: using motion sensors in real life care situations

Objective. People use pedometers and sport watches to measure calorie use and training performance. Knowing "how you move" is often more important than knowing "how much you move". Measuring "how you move" and feedback to the user is the objective of the BioSensing project. Patients with osteoarthritis of the knee and patients with acute knee injury are the intended user groups. Main content of paper. A sensor system was developed that quantifies simultaneously body acceleration, knee angle, foot pressure and repetitive loading patterns of the knee joint during activities of daily living. Patients get feedback if they move too much, too little, or move in the wrong way. The sensor system consists of a smart knee brace that measures the knee angle (developed by TNO), a combined angular velocity and acceleration sensor (McRoberts), a foot sensor (Zephyr/TNO), a data acquisition system (IDEE), and a wireless communication system (IDEE/Neways). Data is uploaded to a webserver and presented via a web application. Demonstrators were created for the medical specialist (diagnostics), for the physiotherapist (training), and patients at home (training, monitoring). Results. Demonstrators were successfully shown at the BioSensing Symposium (Maastricht, Dec 2010). Experiments were conducted at Maastricht UMC+ to validate the knee brace sensors. Software was developed that automatically detects different daily activities by analysis of movement data: walking, climbing stairs, descending stairs, running (MOBILAB). An application of the DynaPort Hybrid was developed for knee loading measurement during daily activities (McRoberts). Conclusion. BioSensing movement sensors give patients the opportunity to be more involved in their own rehabilitation, using direct feedback as a guideline. © 2011 The authors and IOS Press. All rights reserved.