Sensors (Mar 2020)

Electronic Skin Wearable Sensors for Detecting Lumbar–Pelvic Movements

  • Yuxin Zhang,
  • Pari Delir Haghighi,
  • Frada Burstein,
  • Lim Wei Yap,
  • Wenlong Cheng,
  • Lina Yao,
  • Flavia Cicuttini

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/s20051510
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 20, no. 5
p. 1510

Abstract

Read online

Background: A nanomaterial-based electronic-skin (E-Skin) wearable sensor has been successfully used for detecting and measuring body movements such as finger movement and foot pressure. The ultrathin and highly sensitive characteristics of E-Skin sensor make it a suitable alternative for continuously out-of-hospital lumbar−pelvic movement (LPM) monitoring. Monitoring these movements can help medical experts better understand individuals’ low back pain experience. However, there is a lack of prior studies in this research area. Therefore, this paper explores the potential of E-Skin sensors to detect and measure the anatomical angles of lumbar−pelvic movements by building a linear relationship model to compare its performance to clinically validated inertial measurement unit (IMU)-based sensing system (ViMove). Methods: The paper first presents a review and classification of existing wireless sensing technologies for monitoring of body movements, and then it describes a series of experiments performed with E-Skin sensors for detecting five standard LPMs including flexion, extension, pelvic tilt, lateral flexion, and rotation, and measure their anatomical angles. The outputs of both E-Skin and ViMove sensors were recorded during each experiment and further analysed to build the comparative models to evaluate the performance of detecting and measuring LPMs. Results: E-Skin sensor outputs showed a persistently repeating pattern for each movement. Due to the ability to sense minor skin deformation by E-skin sensor, its reaction time in detecting lumbar−pelvic movement is quicker than ViMove by ~1 s. Conclusions: E-Skin sensors offer new capabilities for detecting and measuring lumbar−pelvic movements. They have lower cost compared to commercially available IMU-based systems and their non-invasive highly stretchable characteristic makes them more comfortable for long-term use. These features make them a suitable sensing technology for developing continuous, out-of-hospital real-time monitoring and management systems for individuals with low back pain.

Keywords