Smart Socket Prosthesis Sensing Liners for Pressure Ulcer Monitoring and Prevention
Abstract
Traumatic injury often necessitates warfighters to undergo limb amputations, including more than 1,600 military personnel who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Enduring Freedom, and Operation New Dawn. In order to help the warfighter to regain lost functionality, they are often fitted with socket prostheses. However, sockets today utilize rigid materials that are directlyfitted over the residual stump, which can cause discomfort as well as painful and expensive-to treat complications such as pressure ulcers. Emerging developments in smart sockets not only aim to replace conventional hard sockets with more compliant materials for better fit, but they are alsofitted with a suite of sensors for monitoring socket performance and amputee health. In order to enable pressure ulcer monitoring as part of these next-generation socket prostheses, the objective of this project is to advance densely distributed pressure sensing. This project builds on previouswork on Nano composite-based fabric sensors, where densely distributed pressure sensing was successfully validated using an electrical resistance tomography (ERT) measurement scheme and algorithm. The fabric sensor can be lined within the interior of the socket and only interrogated at its boundaries to provide full-field pressure distribution monitoring capabilities. Therefore, threeresearch tasks will be conducted during this one-year ONR project. First, the sensing performance (i.e., sensitivity, resolution, and accuracy) of these nanocomposite sensing liners will be characterized and optimized by tuning the sensing element (material) to detect limit states that correspond to conditions likely to induce pressure ulcers in amputees. Second, near-real-timepressure mapping will be achieved by considering both hardware and ERT algorithm enhancements. Finally, the system will be integrated with LIM Innovations??? smart socket prosthesis and validated in the laboratory. The vision is that advancing the technology readiness level of the proposed smart socket prosthesis sensing liners will improve pressure ulcer monitoringand prevention capabilities while facilitating transition of this technology to warfighter use
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Jul 27, 2018
- Source ID
- N000141812483
Entities
People
- Kenneth J. Loh
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- University of California, San Diego