Wearable mobile sensor and communication platform for the in-situ monitoring of lower limb health in amputees

Mathur, Neha and Glesk, Ivan and Davidson, Alan and Paul, Greig and Banford, Jamie and Irvine, James and Buis, Adrianus; (2016) Wearable mobile sensor and communication platform for the in-situ monitoring of lower limb health in amputees. In: 2016 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS). IEEE, CAN, pp. 1336-1339. ISBN 9781479953400 (https://doi.org/10.1109/ISCAS.2016.7527503)

[thumbnail of Mathur-etal-ISCAS2016-wearable-mobile-sensor-communication-platform-in-situ-monitoring-lower-limb]
Preview
Text. Filename: Mathur_etal_ISCAS2016_wearable_mobile_sensor_communication_platform_in_situ_monitoring_lower_limb.pdf
Accepted Author Manuscript

Download (397kB)| Preview

Abstract

Monitoring the health of a residual limb in prosthesis is key to detect early signs of tissue injury, and could improve patient quality of life. However, monitoring at skin level could induce possible discomfort and irritation, making the skin susceptible for breakdown. The use of non-invasive sensor technologies within the flexible liner of the prosthetic device can alleviate these issues. The rehabilitation of lower limb prosthesis wearers can be greatly improved by a reliable continuous monitoring system that can alert both the user and health authority by early warning of the development of tissue damage. In this work, we have created a wearable sensor platform for lower limb amputees that is capable of gathering data from the sensors (placed on the elastomer), and store and transmit to a central health database, for the purpose of analyzing it. This paper explores the architecture used, as well as some of the challenges encountered when handling such quantities of data as experienced in this project.