Monitoring Android System for Leg Orthosis
Paraplegia is bilateral paralysis of the lower body including the two legs. It is commonly resulting from the Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) which communication between brain and the other part of body is blocked or loss. Messages below the level of injury are unable to pass damage in the spinal cord. A. Ibrahimreported that the major cause resulting in SCI in Hospital Kuala Lumpur in between 2006 to 2009, motor vehicles accidents contribute 66% and falls 28% [1]. In a study out of 670 motor vehicle occupant fatalities in Malaysia, 176 (26.3%) cases suffered spine injury. Motorcyclist are particularly vulnerable as the helmet only protect the head but not the neck and spine[2].Figure 1 shows the depiction of a catapulting injury to a motorcyclist. Based on the study conducted by Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Hospital Kuala Lumpur, there were 292 patients suffering SCI from 2006 to 2009. The number increase every year. Reported that 63% of them subsequently became paraplegic (individuals who are suffering Paraplegia) and 37 % became tetraplegic (individuals who are suffering Tetraplegia) [1]. Tetraplegia or as known as Quadriplegia is a cervical (neck) injuries. Tetraplegic resulting in four limbs both arms and legs) which are neck-down to paralyzed. Meanwhile, paraplegic resulting only in lower body (both legs) to paralyzed [3].Most of the paraplegics wish to be able to walk normally again. It is important for a paraplegic to perform a regular range of motion exercise program. Lack of exercise can result in increased muscle spasms and increase the chances of developing pressure sores. Failure to exercise on a regular basis can cause joints, muscles, ligaments and tendons to stiffen. If parts of the body stiffen, it will impact the ability to sit and maintain body posture. In some critical cases, it leads to urinary failure or completely paralyzed [4, 5]. Thus, the leg orthosis instrument is introduced to help the paraplegic to perform regular exercise. Based on Dorland's Medical Dictionary for Health Consumers 2007, orthosis is an orthopedic appliance or apparatus used to support, align, prevent and correct deformities or to improve function of movable parts of the body [6] . The leg orthosis instrument are largely electrical assembled. Based on the previous study, the doctors have increasingly come to realize the importance of exercise for people with paralysis. It is important to get immobile limbs to move [7].Evaluation of performance for the leg orthosis had been made and it is proven to solve problems of paraplegic patients however the previous development of the leg orthosis is controlled manually where the leg orthosis will swing up and down by controlling on-off of the power button. Therefore during rehabilitation treatment plans, the physiotherapist (a specialist in physical rehabilitation and exercise) must always alongside with the paraplegic patient to control the on-off power button and monitored the result of the treatment. There are important parameters that doctor, physiotherapist and medical doctor need to monitor during the exercise periodhowever this information is difficult to be available for the doctors. Therefore this project continues with the development of the control system and monitoring platform for leg orthosis by using Android application. This study mainly focuses on the development of a user-friendly control and monitoring system for leg exercise using leg orthosis. The motorized leg orthosis will be controlled using Android device which is connected wirelessly to the exercise system. The patient's pulse rate, date and time will be shown on the android device during the exercise session. The data of the previous exercise sessions also can be storedtogether with other patient's information. These information are important data needed by the doctor during rehabilitation plans.Android is the world’s most commonly used smartphone platform and it is used by many different smartphone manufacturers. Besides that, the price gap between iOS and Android smartphones is widening. The price of iOS smartphones are double the price of standard Android smartphones. This user-friendly system is design to accommodate paraplegic at a reasonable cost. CodeShoppy
Once the Android application is selected by the user then switch on Bluetooth connection of the Android device as shown in Figure 8 (i). Secondly, click in the ‘Connect to LOE’ in Figure 8 (ii)and a new window will pop-up. In the new window, there will be varies of available Bluetooth connections detected. Find and connect to Bluetooth_V3. By connecting to Bluetooth_V3 means the Android application can control the movements of leg orthosis. List picker is used to show filter bar of Bluetooth connection available and allow the Android device pair with a specific bluetooth connection. In this study, it is used to instruct the Android device to pair with DF-Bluetooth V3. If the bluetooth connection is successfully paired with the DF-Bluetooth V3, a green colour text will notify, ‘LOE enable’ and if the bluetooth bluetooth connection unsuccessfully paired with the DF-Bluetooth V3, a red colour text will notify, ‘LOE disabled’.Thirdly, Figure 8 (iii) the user have to verify the date and time. If each button is clicked, pop-up windows will appear. The date and time for this function are tally with the Android device date and time. User only need to verify the date and time but in case it doesn’t tally user are allowed to edit it.Figure 8 (iv) shows there are three main control buttons foruser to control the movement of the leg orthosis. There are stop, forward and reverse buttons. If the stop button is click, the leg orthosis will stop moving. If the forward button is clicked, the leg orthosis will move upward while if the reverse button is clicked the leg orthosis will move downward. The user can continuously exercise by clicking different buttons.Figure 8 (v) shows the user can monitor their pulse rate reading by clicking the ‘Check Pulse Rate’. A new window will appear. The pulse rate waveform is program in the Processing 2 platform. It is a programming language, development environment and online community. Processing 2is an open source language and development tool for writing programs in other computers or Android device. Useful whenprogrammer want those other computers or Android device to communicate with an Arduino, for instance to display or save some data collected by the Arduino. In order for Processing 2 to communicate with Android, Android Mode have to be installed. In this study, Arduino with Processing 2 is used to display the pulse rate data from the Arduino to an Android device. Figure 8 (vi) and (vii) shows user have to capture and insert manually the Beats Per Minute (BPM) readings at the beginning and at the end of the leg orthosis exercise.Then in Figure 8 (viii) shows user will have click the average BPM button to calculate the average of BPM readings.Equation below shows the mathematical calculation
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