REAL-TIME MONITORING OF BONE FRACTURE RECOVERY BY USING AWARE, SENSING, SMART AND ACTIVE ORTHOPEDIC DEVICES

Abstract

Bone loss and osteoporosis is a serious health problem worldwide. The impact of osteoporosis is far greater than many other serious health problems, such as breast and prostate cancers. Statistically, one in three women and one in five men over 50 years of age will experience osteoporotic fractures in their life. In this project, the design and development of a portable IoT-based sensing system for early detection of bone loss have been presented. In this project, we propose the improvement of a fixation device design, which implements paradigms of aware, sensing, smart and active devices and thus, enables real-time monitoring of bone fracture healing. Such a design is considered as IoT gateway, capable to classify occurrences of events and milestones in patient recovery process, based on the data from different sensors, and report those to the specialists or related Healthcare Information System. The design is implemented in the example of classifying patient’s compliance to the prescribed behaviour in the postoperative treatment of bone fractures.

Existing System

This system proposed a cooperative IoT approach for the better health monitoring and control of rural and health parameters of poor human being like blood pressure (BP), hemoglobin (HB), blood sugar, abnormal cellular growth in any part of the body, etc.

Proposed System

The proposed system consists of Conductivity sensor, temperature sensor, force/torque sensor and inertial sensor. Conductivity sensor data is used to decide on healing stage of fracture. It can accurately and precisely identify a number of milestones in a treatment timeline, when certain actions need to be taken, for example, increase of load in exercises, rod extension in cases of limb extension procedures, and others. Pin contact temperature directly affects the surgical procedure and it can help to avoid the risks of thermo necrosis, which can occur due to the excess heat, generated during the pin application. Force/torque sensors data are used to calculate stress state in the mechanical frame. Variations in stress measurements can be interpreted as occurrences of pin loosening and/or mal-union, but also they can be used in real-time monitoring of patient’s compliance to the maximum load, during the postoperative treatment. Accelerometers data is used to classify unwanted behavior of the patient, for example, running, jumping, etc... These sensors are fixed on the leg of the patient and monitor though the personal computer which is connected to the internet.

Architecture