Abstract

An autonomous extraction of knee range of motion (ROM) data for a knee extension monitoring and rehabilitation device is introduced in the paper. For our device, the knee ROM signal with a range of 0° to 90° is measured using an angle sensor or the accelerometer sensor, which is linked to the NI-myRIO embedded device as the processing unit. The graphical user interface (GUI) using LabVIEW from the NI-myRIO is also used for knee rehabilitation program setting, data monitoring, and recording, respectively. The novelty and major contribution of this work is that we propose an autonomous extraction solution for measured ROM signals. Several important extracted data related to knee movement performance are automatically reported, such as the minimum and maximum values of knee movement degree above various threshold levels, the time periods the user can maintain the knee above each threshold range, and how long the user can move the knee from the starting time to reach each threshold level. Our device and method has been tested by healthy subjects, where gender, age range, body size, knee side, exercise behavior, and surgery experience are included for consideration. Experimental results show that real-time knee ROM signals and all extracted ROM information can be monitored according to the predefined rehabilitation program. The findings of all subjects are also compared and evaluated, allowing us to assess their knee performance. Additionally, the tracking of ROM results of the subject together with extracted data is also illustrated. With our proposed device and ROM data extraction solution, rehabilitation users can practice themselves and know their performances during testing, while medical experts can simultaneously review the results and apply the appropriate rehabilitation program in response to the users.