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.
