The medical sector suffers from a severe shortage of physical therapists; Statistics indicate that patients with chronic disabilities have had to live with their injuries at a rate of up to 75% of their lives because there are not enough therapists.
The solution to this crisis may lie in taking advantage of the development of sensor technologies; Such as devices that are installed on the body and track movement, which can be used in several therapeutic areas to help patients move independently and accurately.
The limited number of physiotherapists available has led researchers and designers to create a physical rehabilitation system without having to attend sessions with a physical therapist.
Staff at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (CSAIL) Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT) teamed up with Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) to pilot the MuscleRehab project system that captures and tracks movement with 3 technologies; It's an imaging technology that measures muscle movement called electrical impedance tomography (EIT) , a virtual reality (VR) headset, and a tracking suit.
The virtual reality and tracking suit allow the patient to see themselves working alongside an imaginary physical therapist.
With this technology, the scientific team was able to measure the accuracy of the exercise, then presented the results to a professional physical therapist, who in turn identified the muscle groups that were supposed to participate in each exercise, improving the overall accuracy of the exercises by 15%.
A mixture of artificial intelligence and the Internet of things
These systems are made up of different types of sensors that use the Internet of Things (IoT). Artificial intelligence algorithms run inference modeling to determine how each muscle moves, and rely on data to identify muscle groups, providing more useful exercises.
Jonny Chu, an MIT doctoral student and lead author of the MuscleRehab paper, says the researchers sought “to not limit the sensing scenario to a clinical setting, but to enable athletes to rehabilitate and recover from injuries based on the data.” Our goal is to see whether We can help with prevention by measuring deep muscle involvement, so that we can note if the data is abnormal compared to a patient's movement history, and provide insight into the potential muscle trajectory in these cases."
Dr. Zhou has been digging deeper into the field of personal health sensors, and was inspired by the electrical impedance tomography, which measures the electrical conduction of muscles, from a project he did in 2021. He used modern imaging techniques to create a toolkit for designing and manufacturing motion and health sensors.
Previously, electrical impedance tomography was used only for monitoring lung function, detecting chest tumors, and diagnosing pulmonary embolism, but it was not used for muscle scans or motion-related imaging.
How does the MuscleRehab device work?
It is noteworthy that the device, produced by the "Muscle Rehab" project, includes a sensor panel that uses electrical resistance tomography technology, to which two strips filled with electrodes are placed in the prosthesis in the upper thigh, to capture volumetric data in three dimensions.
To capture the motion, the team used OptiTrack, which uses 39 markers and an array of cameras that sense motion at very high frame rates.
This is then displayed on a virtual reality glasses, which are turned on and show the active muscle by highlighting it in several colors, it and the surrounding muscles.
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technology