Design and Implementation of a Wearable System Based on a Flexible
Capacitive Sensor, Monitoring Knee Laxity
Abstract
The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tear is one of the most common knee
injuries causing instability to the knee joint. Current methods of
diagnosis fail to meet the ergonomic, reliability and reproducibility
requirements. Thus, the wearable sensors are gaining momentum to
overcome current challenges. This paper aims at proposing a wearable
capacitive based sensor system that shows a good potential in
substituting the currently used methods for the diagnosis of ACL
rupture. The developed sensor system measures the internal tibial
rotation of the knee. It is compact and lightweight. Being cable free,
it can be worn as a patch, without impeding the freedom of movement of
the physician. Moreover, it can be powered with a battery or wireless.
Both methods make it compact, ergonomic, easy for the patient to wear
and for the doctor to use. To analyze the suitability of the developed
sensing system, data from a knee simulator setup and three healthy
volunteers (2 Males and 1 Female) are compared and analyzed. In all the
patients, above 15° for every 5° angle variation, a relative change of
capacitance with respect to its initial value of 0.01 is observed. These
results are comparable with the knee simulator’s data with a max RMSE of
0.002. Below 15° the system was additionally able to measure a
gender-based difference of rotation due to the higher flexibility of
ligaments in females. For them the sensitivity below and above 15° is
comparable, for male the sensitivity below 15° is lower. The results
show that the developed system has good potential in substituting the
currently used method for the diagnosis of ACL rupture and paves the way
toward the continuous observation in free movement of knee laxity.