iHeal: Diagnosing Cruciate Ligament (ACL) Ruptures

Keywords: Cruciate Ligament (ACL) Ruptures, Diagnosis in Situ, Dynamic Diagnosis in Motion, Optimal Rehabilitation

Motivation: The knee is a human’s largest join and essential in all aspects of food-based motion. In order to avoid unwanted collateral damage, the timely and correct diagnosis of Cruciate Ligament (ACL) injuries, such as ruptures, is of high value for patients, doctors, and insurance companies. Furthermore, the monitoring of the tibia displacement can be of high value during rehabilitation as it allows for the optimization of the patient’s therapy on an individual basis.

Goals: iHeal is supposed to be a small embedded diagnosis device that has the following properties:
(1) easy to use even for all types of medical staff, such as orthopedists, general doctors, physiotherapists, and even nurses,
(2) applicable not only in a relaxed postures, such as lying on the back, but also during regular regular everyday life activities and sports, and
(3) applicable during surgery in order to derive physiological parameters.

Approaches: This project has incorporated the following approaches:
(1) design of an external frame that measures three angles,
(2) data preprocessing on small micro controller,
(3) wireless data transmission to a laptop or tablet PC, and
(4) reconstruction of the knee angle the tibia displacement as well as user-friendly visualization on a laptop or tablet PC.

Results: So far, the project has developed two laboratory-based proof-of-concepts.

Research Team: Ralf Joost, Martin Behrens, Prof. Dr. Sven Bruhn, and Ralf Salomon

Contact: Ralf Salomon; for further information, see also the iHeal web page

Selected Publications:

Partners: