Rehabilitation after finger flexor tendon repair is challenging for surgeons and hand therapists. Limited blood flow through fingers often leads to poor hand recovery quality. Some tendon repair failures are due to the suture or knot rupture. Appropriate exercises are needed for the recovery of the full motion range. In practice, patients meet with hand therapists regularly to do finger curling exercises under their guidance. These regular visits have become a significant burden to the patients, and not being able to do finger exercises at home limits their recovery rate. We proposed a gyroscope-based PIP joint goniometer for real-time measurement. To set up the goniometer, each sensor is placed on one end of the measuring joint. Each sensor can measure the 3-axis displacement and rotation. By calculating the relative angular difference, the goniometer can generate the PIP joint angle measurement. When the patients do finger curling, they can monitor the curling angle in real-time, which can help them realize the progress. Moreover, the sensor can record the number of curling behavior and prevent any potential damage caused by overexercise.
In our design, our prototype and design reached the expectation of our client and senior design group. The change in PIP joint angle can be plotted successfully with our algorithm. Based on our verification the data acquisition accuracy reached a sufficient level. The hardware qualification and software qualification test validates that the system operation is relatively convenient and the wearing experience is comfortable. However, there is still room for improvement in our design and prototype. We will focus on software interference design in the future.
Acknowledgment
This work would not have been possible without the financial support of Dr. Mitchell Pet and the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis.
Especially indebted to Dr. Lori Setton, Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Dr. Dennis Barbour, our Design mentor, Dr. Joseph Klaesner, BME senior design instructor, Dr. Patricia Widder, and Spartan Light Metal Products Makerspace,