Wearable eHealth System for Physical Rehabilitation: Ankle Plantar-Dorsi-Flexion Monitoring

With the latest advances in electronics and networking, eHealth has become a reality and is enhancing the life quality of people, by enabling them to live healthier and a more fulfilling life. On the other hand, the continuous population’s aging is pushing the limits on our health system, increasing the need for eHealth solutions, especially those enabling continuous monitoring of senior citizens and patients. Towards such goal, this paper presents an innovative eHealth system for ankle angular movement monitoring for physical rehabilitation. The proposed solution has a non- invasive design, due to its small size and ease of use; hence, it provides users with full autonomy to live a fully active life. The system is composed of optical fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors, used for the angular movement monitoring. The proposed system was tested in a healthy volunteer, and the obtained results show the accuracy of the proposed system, by displaying the expected behavior of normal healthy ankles. The system can be used in continuous ankle monitoring during routine daily activity in rehabilitating patients or elder citizens’ scenarios, or can even be integrated into an exoskeleton, along with other sensors, for complete monitoring of all movements of the subject.