Evaluating Lower Limb Joint Flexion by Computerized Visual Tracking System and Compared with Electrogoniometer and Universal Goniometer

The lower limb joint’s range of motion (ROM) is an important clinical parameter used in diagnosing the severity level of lower limb joint injury. Along with the use of mechanical devices such as goniometer or electrogoniometer, motion capture and visual tracking has been increasingly deployed to aid the lower limb joint diagnosis. The universal goniometer can simply measure the joint angles. However, it has some limitations on allowing the clinician to analyze the ROM at the gate and track the lower limb joint. Motion capture devices are mainly used to analyze the patient’s joint flexion and assess the condition of the joints and bones. This study has used the visual tracking system (VTS), electrogoniometer (EGM) and universal goniometer (UGM) methods to examine the range of motion of 20 healthy subject volunteers. The results of three methods have been compared and discussed. The ROM result shows that VTS have the smallest SEM with averaged of 1.49 compared to EGM 3.41 and UGM 1.53. Thus, VTS give the high accurate in averaged lower limb flexion measurement. The result of joint flexion shows that left and right limb joint are similar for the healthy subject

Modeling Of Lower Extremity For Joint Torques Determination By Performing A Lifting Task

Physical lifting tasks commonly involve two types of body postures,namely, squat lifting and stoop lifting. Studies shows improper bodyposture during lifting task has detrimental effect to human lower-backregion over extended period of time. This is because generally, stoop-liftingposture exerts relatively higher moments and compression forces on humanback than squat lifting posture. However, this claim was never thoroughlyexamined and validated from mathematical model approach. This paperproposes a mathematical model to represent the lower extremity of humanbody during lifting tasks, based on a two-link kinematic open chain in twodimensional spaces. Thus, all moment of torque and their effect to everypart of lower extremity of human body can be thoroughly analyzed

Modelling of a Cable-driven Ankle Rehabilitation Robot

Ankle injury is one of physical injury that commonly occurs in sports or domestic-related activities. Presently, there are various established treatments for ankle rehabilitation in hospital or rehabilitation clinic. This involves a range of motion treatment exercise and endurance treatment exercise. However, current treatment requires patients to frequently visit to the hospital which is tedious and also repetitive. One of the solutions to deal with the repetitiveness of the treatment is to introduce an automated device such as a robot that can help the therapist to perform this repetitive task on the patients. A concept design for a cable driven ankle rehabilitation robot has been proposed for this task. The reason for selecting cable-based design is the design is lighter than a rigidly based robot. This adds up its potential for mobility and portability which allows convenience to the users. The focus of this paper is to present inverse kinematics analysis and modelling of the proposed concept design of the robot which aimed to determine the feasibility of the concept design. Overall, the modelling of the cable-based ankle rehabilitation robot using inverse kinematics is feasible to project or to predict the trajectory paths of the moving platform of the robot. This will be useful for planning suitable dimension for fabrication of the robot

Measurement of the Flexible Bending Force of the Index and Middle Fingers for Virtual Interaction

AbstractIn this paper the development of a new low cost dataglove based on fingertip bending tracking techniques for measuring the fingers bending on various virtual interaction activities is presented as an alternative to the rehabilitation services enhancement in the betterment of the quality of life especially for the disabled person. The purpose of the research is to design a flexible control for measurement study of virtual interaction of index and middle fingers that are important in a variety of contexts as well as the deterministic approach. These analyses of fingers flexing of the system were using the flexible bend sensor functioning as a key intermediate of the process to track the fingertip positions and orientations. The main propose of the low cost dataglove is to provide natural input control of interaction in virtual, multimodal and tele-presence environments as an input devices provide as they can monitor the dexterity and flexibility characteristics of the human hand motion. Preliminary experimental results have shown that the dataglove capable to measure several human Degree of Freedom (DoF), “translating” them into commands for the interaction in the virtual world

In vitro evaluation of finger's hemodynamics for vein graft surveillance using electrical bio-impedance method

Electrical bio-impedance measurement has great potential in many biomedical applications including vein graft surveillance. Studies have shown that thrombosis was the major cause of the vein graft failure. The meticulous skills of the surgeon and effective postoperative surveillance of vein graft remain the cornerstones of clinical success in the current surgical management of vein graft survival. Vascular blood flow is the key clinical indicators for the evaluation of patency of the vein graft and ensuring the patient's quality of life. In this work, electrical bio-impedance method has been proposed as an alternative to the existing surveillance method as it is non-invasive, portable, easy applicable in practice, fast response, radiation free, and required only low-cost instrumentation. It was employed to measure pulsatile changes in longitudinal bio-impedance to quantify arterial blood flow and blood volume. We expect that by measuring the changes in tissue bio-impedance which can be used to evaluate important peripheral hemodynamic, it allows the detection of early stage stenosis within vascular and vein graft as well as estimate its severity with predetermined normative data provided

Overcoming issues of oil palm plantations manual1 work with ergonomic and engineering considerations

This paper is an initial study by reviewing current situation and researches to determine the issues with manual works in an oil palm plantation and the need for mechanisation with consideration for the application in the smallholder plantations. The smallholder oil palm plantations in certain areas, activities of harvesting, collecting, loading and pruning are still done using manual tools. The small land size ownership means it is not economical to acquire large machineries and current harvesting technologies to reduce the burden of the plantation works. Therefore, the current practise is still in favour. With the increasing awareness and role of ergonomic in recent days, a new solution for this current situation must be taken action not only for the benefit of human in terms of wellbeing but also towards the better gain margin as human productivity increases. Reviews on this paper is based on the three job scopes that had been identified high risk for musculoskeletal disorders, the use of manual tools and equipment, mechanised option for the manual tools and equipment, and issues with both manual and some developed mechanised solution

CFD analysis on mismatched end-to-end internal diameter of RSVG models

A digital arterial disease in upper extremity is uncommon happened compare to arterial disease in lower extremity. A surgical vein graft interposition is performed as revascularization procedure. However, mismatching between end-to-end internal diameter of reverse saphenous vein graft (RSVG) and existing digital artery cause blockage in RSVG vessel. In previous study, size discrepancy (small to large) in vessel causes the abnormal blood flow and will initiate the thrombosis formations as stated by Rory F. et al. Furthermore, their previous study is also supported by clinical theory as written in Wilmer W. et al. and Krishnan B. Chandran et al.s’ text books. The main goal of this study is to analyze the relationship the patterns of blood flow through mismatching between end-to-end internal diameter of RSVG models and existing digital artery (large to small) with effect to the initiation of thrombus formation in RSVG models. A Three-dimensional Computational Fluid Dynamic (3-D CFD) method is employed to investigate blood flow velocity, blood pressure gradient and wall shear stress (WSS) on ideal straight (well matched between internal diameter of RSVG and recipient arteries) and internal diameter mismatched of end-to-end RSVG models. In this experiment, we expect that steady state laminar blood flow demonstrates abnormal flow pattern in mismatched internal diameter RSVG models compared to an ideal straight model. As conclusion, any abnormal blood flow pattern will initiate the formation of thrombus and reduce the vein graft survival

3D-rigid objects motion segmentation: a study of practical limitations

Motion segmentation or recovering structure-and-motion (SaM) from images of dynamic scenes plays a significant role in many computer-vision applications ranging from local navigation of a mobile robot to image rendering for multimedia applications. Since in many applications, the exact type of motion and camera parameters are not known, a priori, the fundamental matrix is commonly used as a general motion model. Although the estimation of a fundamental matrix and its use for motion segmentation are well understood, the studies of conditions governing the feasibility of segmentation for different types of motions are largely unaddressed. In this thesis, the feasibility of motion segmentation using the fundamental matrix is analysed. The focus is on a scene including multiple SaMs viewed by an uncalibrated camera. The quantifiable measures for the degree of separation were theoretically derived for the types of motion that are usually seen in practical applications, namely, motion from background, translational motions and planar motions. Sets of condition to guarantee successful segmentation were proposed via extensive experiments, the design of which was based on the Monte Carlo statistical method, using synthetic images. Experiments using real image data were set up and executed to examine the relevance of those conditions to the problems encountered in real applications. The experimental results show the capability of the proposed conditions to correctly predict the outcome of several segmentation scenarios. In addition, they also show that the Monte Carlo experimental results are very relevant to the problems encountered in real applications. In practice, the success of motion segmentation could be predicted via the value of the degree of separation between two motions estimated from obtainable scene and motion parameters. Therefore, the proposed conditions serve as a guideline for practitioners in designing motion segmentation solutions for computer-vision applications

Conditions for segmentation of 2D translations of 3D objects

Various computer vision applications involve recovery and estimation of multiple motions from images of dynamic scenes. The exact nature of objects' motions and the camera parameters are often not known a priori and therefore, the most general motion model (the fundamental matrix) is applied. Although the estimation of a fundamental matrix and its use for motion segmentation are well understood, the conditions governing the feasibility of segmentation for different types of motions are yet to be discovered. In this paper, we study the feasibility of separating 2D translations of 3D objects in a dynamic scene. We show that successful segmentation of 2D translations depends on the magnitude of the translations, average distance between the camera and objects, focal length of the camera and level of noise. Extensive set of controlled experiments using both synthetic and real images were conducted to show the validity of the proposed constraints. In addition, we quantified the conditions for successful segmentation of 2D translations in terms of the magnitude of those translations, the average distance between the camera and objects in motions for a given camera. These results are of particular importance for practitioners designing solutions for computer vision problems

Technologies for Assessment of Motor Disorders in Parkinson’s Disease: A Review

Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is characterized as the commonest neurodegenerative illness that gradually degenerates the central nervous system. The goal of this review is to come out with a summary of the recent progress of numerous forms of sensors and systems that are related to diagnosis of PD in the past decades. The paper reviews the substantial researches on the application of technological tools (objective techniques) in the PD field applying different types of sensors proposed by previous researchers. In addition, this also includes the use of clinical tools (subjective techniques) for PD assessments, for instance, patient self-reports, patient diaries and the international gold standard reference scale, Unified Parkinson Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS). Comparative studies and critical descriptions of these approaches have been highlighted in this paper, giving an insight on the current state of the art. It is followed by explaining the merits of the multiple sensor fusion platform compared to single sensor platform for better monitoring progression of PD, and ends with thoughts about the future direction towards the need of multimodal sensor integration platform for the assessment of PD