Authors:
Danilo Pani
1
;
Gianluca Barabino
1
;
Alessia Dessì
1
;
Alessandro Mathieu
2
and
Luigi Raffo
1
Affiliations:
1
University of Cagliari, Italy
;
2
University and AOU of Cagliari, Italy
Keyword(s):
Kinesitherapy, Real-time, Rheumatic disease, Hand rehabilitation.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Biomedical Engineering
;
Biomedical Instrumentation
;
Biomedical Instruments and Devices
;
Devices
;
Embedded Signal Processing
;
Health Monitoring Devices
;
Human-Computer Interaction
;
Physiological Computing Systems
Abstract:
Rheumatic diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis and systemic sclerosis, may seriously reduce the quality of life of the patients. Nowadays, their progress can be controlled only through personalised pharmacological treatments. Kinesitherapy can also help in faster movement recovery, also contrasting the disability worsening. This paper presents a portable low-cost system for the real-time quantitative monitoring and evaluation of hand rehabilitation exercises. The system, based on a MSP430 microcontroller central unit, provides a platform for the analysis of fine characteristics hitherto unavailable of 4 exercises required for the hand rehabilitation in rheumatic patients. The systemcan be controlled, through a Bluetooth connection, by a graphical user interface running on the physician’s PC. The first prototypical systems have been developed for experimental outpatient trials.