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The New Computational Analysis Tool for Upper Limb Movement in Physiotherapy

Authors:
Jesse Teixeira da Silva
Jose Elmar Feger
Luiz Antonio Pereira Neves

Keywords: Computational Physiotherapy; Accelerometers; Rehabilitation Treatment; Biomedical Visualization.

Abstract:
The present project aims at developing an interface capable of capturing, analyzing and stimulating movements of persons who have some motor dysfunction in the upper arms due to accidents or congenital disabilities, i.e., those who need rehabilitation treatment. In this paper, we have used accelerometers with the objective of capturing the movements carried out by the user. These movements are captured in the form of analogical signals represented by voltage variation. Hence, it requires the use of a microcontroller to handle the data. This microcontroller controls how the data will be sent to the computer, and also, it makes possible the transformation of the signals into the digital format, which facilitates the processing steps and the computer analysis. When the obtained data are sent to a computer, their numerical transformation step starts off with speed and it is plotted on the user screen in an animated form representing the user's movement. The user receives an instantaneous evaluation of his movements throughout the time spent to execute it. The results obtained from the experiments show that this is a promising tool. As it is a prototype, it still needs several improvements. We believe this tool can become a commercial technology with great accessibility and low cost.

Pages: 9 to 13

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2015

Publication date: March 22, 2015

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4162

ISBN: 978-1-61208-392-6

Location: Nice, France

Dates: from March 22, 2015 to March 27, 2015