Validation of wearable inertial sensors for spinal motion assessment

• Main Author: Tan, Crljen Yong Ming
• Other Authors: Chou Siaw Meng
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2023
• Subjects: Engineering::Mechanical engineering
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/168483
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Spinal musculoskeletal disorders (SMDs) are a common cause of pain and disability, affecting millions of people worldwide. These disorders can result from various factors, such as poor posture, repetitive motion, trauma, and age-related changes World Health Organization, 2018. The objective of this study was to validate the accuracy of Intertial Measurement Units for the use of measuring spinal range of motion (ROM), by means of tasking healthy subjects to perform several exercises while using both IMU and Motion Capture System (MoCap) to record the data of their movements. The comparison was done by processing the MoCap data through Qualisys Track Manager Software (QTM) and Visual3D (V3D) to produce Joint Angles and Joint Velocities that can be compared to the output of the Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) as the IMU has built-in filters to produce the Angle and Velocities of its own movements during the tasks. From the comparison of the data obtained from the IMU and V3D, it can been seen that the IMU has capabilities to track changes in angle and velocity to produce the ROM. However, the IMU’s accuracy differs greatly from that of the MoCap System.