Journal
BIOMEDICAL MICRODEVICES
Volume 14, Issue 1, Pages 217-224Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s10544-011-9599-2
Keywords
Load sensor; Continuous patient monitoring; Underfoot loading; Piezoresistive sensors
Funding
- University of Utah Research Foundation
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Continuous force measurement can provide valuable insight to the efficacy of limb loading regimes during fracture rehabilitation. Currently there is no load monitoring device that is capable of more than 1 h of continuous recording. To enable continuous underfoot load monitoring a piezoresistive pressure sensor was encapsulated in a non-compressible silicone gel. This basic approach to signal transduction was implemented in three continuous underfoot load sensor designs. Design I constrained the gel in a rigid urethane housing. Design II constrained the gel in a silicone elastomer bladder. Design III utilized a hybrid approach by constraining the gel with a rigid upperplate inside of an elastomeric bladder. All three designs were subjected to bench and human testing. Design I outperformed the other two designs showing high linearity (correlation coefficient of 1), low static drift (< 1%) and low dynamic drift (< 3%) and captured the largest percentage of weight during human testing (35%). The sensor was designed, tested and shown to be durable and accurate for a 2 week window of time. This sensor has the low cost and high performance required for large scale clinical tests to correlate limb loading and fracture healing rates.
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