ARC Knee Brace: neoprene knee brace with active control using wearable sensors

Remote monitoring of physical rehabilitation process of a patient that has undergone knee surgery is important in particular in the cases like pandemic in which patients may not have the opportunity to receive continuous postoperative treatment due to the measures taken. Currently, there is no available wearable knee brace that keeps track of knee posture during such a rehabilitation process while simultaneously giving users active control and knee posture feedback regarding users’ activity. To solve this problem, ARC (Active Rotation Control) knee brace was developed to guide and facilitate physical therapy movements of patients with knee injuries in an actively controlled manner. The system is able to trigger a visual feedback mechanism when the subject performs various knee postures. Through the Internet, caregivers could obtain patients’ overall knee related rehabilitation metrics. ARC Knee Brace employs inertial motion tracking technology which is based on low-cost inertial sensors and data processing algorithms to capture user's knee posture in real-time during rehabilitation process. The inertial measurement units (IMUs) containing a combination of accelerometer and gyroscope are used as motion sensors to measure accelerations and rotational rates of knee. The sensors track data including acceleration, rotation and temperature. The processing system handles calculating various metrics from the posture of knee. The filtration algorithms aid in collecting correct data in real time. Through data processing, the physician dictated knee movements of a patient are recorded for analysis. Future prospective researches with the subjects from various age ranges and genders are needed to improve the effectiveness as well as design of the ARC Knee Brace.