Upper Limb Portable Motion Analysis System Based on Inertial Technology for Neurorehabilitation Purposes

• Main Authors: Enrique J. Gómez, Josep M. Tormos, Josep Medina, César Cáceres, Eloy Opisso, Javier Solana, Marc Torrent, Úrsula Costa, Rodrigo Pérez
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2010-12-01
• Series: Sensors
• Subjects: motion tracking; inertial sensors; neurorehabilitation; upper limb; biomechanical model
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/10/12/10733/
• ISSN: 1424-8220

Here an inertial sensor-based monitoring system for measuring and analyzing upper limb movements is presented. The final goal is the integration of this motion-tracking device within a portable rehabilitation system for brain injury patients. A set of four inertial sensors mounted on a special garment worn by the patient provides the quaternions representing the patient upper limb’s orientation in space. A kinematic model is built to estimate 3D upper limb motion for accurate therapeutic evaluation. The human upper limb is represented as a kinematic chain of rigid bodies with three joints and six degrees of freedom. Validation of the system has been performed by co-registration of movements with a commercial optoelectronic tracking system. Successful results are shown that exhibit a high correlation among signals provided by both devices and obtained at the Institut Guttmann Neurorehabilitation Hospital.