Estimation of wrist flexion angle from muscle thickness changes measured by a flexible ultrasonic sensor

The estimation of joint motion from muscle thickness has a variety of applications, such as gait analysis, muscle disease diagnosis, and prosthesis control. A wearable flexible ultrasonic sensor made from a piezoelectric polymer film is able to monitor muscle activities while allowing a wider range of body motion because of its lightweight compared to conventional medical ultrasonic probes. A bone-muscle lever model is employed to obtain the relationship between thickness of the flexor muscle at the forearm and wrist flexion angle with a healthy male subject. This relationship is applied to investigate the application of the flexible ultrasonic sensor for estimation of wrist motion. The wrist angles estimated from the muscle thickness changes measured by the flexible ultrasonic sensor exhibit similar trend with those obtained by video image analysis of the wrist motion captured during the experiment.

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