Abstract
This work describes the evaluation of a wearable plastic optical fiber (POF) sensor for monitoring seated spinal posture, as compared to a conventional expert visual analysis, and the development of a field-deployable posture monitoring system. A garment-integrated POF sensor was developed and tested on nine healthy subjects. Data from the wearable sensor were compared to data taken simultaneously from a marker-based motion capture system, for accuracy and reliability. Peak analysis of the resulting data showed a mean time error of 0.53 ± 0.8 s, and a mean value error of 0.64 ± 3.1 deg, which represents 14.5% of the average range of motion. Expert determination of transitional (good to bad) posture showed a variation of 20.9% of range of motion. These results indicate that the wearable sensor approximates the accuracy of expert visual analysis, and provides sufficient accuracy of measurement to reliably monitor seated spinal posture.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 97-105 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems |
| Volume | 2 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2008 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Manuscript received June 8, 2007; revised November 13, 2007 and February 6, 2008. First published July 25, 2008; current version published September 10, 2008. This work was supported in part by Enterprise Ireland under Grant EIPC/2006/32, by UCD Seed Funding under Grant SF-020, and by Science Foundation Ireland under Grant 03/IN.3/I361. This paper was recommended by Associate Editor S. Leonhardt.
Keywords
- Posture
- Wearable sensors
- Wearable technology