Sharif Digital Repository

The interest in wearable systems among the biomedical engineering and clinical community continues to escalate as technical refinements enhance their potential use for both indoor and outdoor applications. For example, an important wearable technology known as a microelectromechanical system (MEMS) is demonstrating promising applications in the area of biomedical engineering. Accordingly, this study was designed to investigate the Sharif-Human Movement Instrumentation System (SHARIF-HMIS), consisting of inertial measurement units (IMUs), stretchable clothing, and a data logger—all of which can be used outside the controlled environment of a laboratory, thus enhancing its overall utility.... 

To date various commercial systems have been used in the GAIT analysis. These systems have some difficulties for clinical use, such as interfering with normal movement and high prices. The possibility of utilization of Kinect as a sensor for GAIT analysis has been studied in this research. The accuracy of Kinect in calculation of GAIT parameters such as lower limb joint angles, stride time, and stride length were computed during normal walking. The effects of the sensor's position and direction relative to the walkway were also investigated. The Kinect sensor was installed at different positions toward the motion path. In each position the data was recorded by both Kinect and a commercial... 

Evaluation of workers’ body posture in workstations is a prerequisite to estimate spinal loads and assess risk of injury for the subsequent design of preventive interventions. The Microsoft Kinect™ sensor is, in this regard, advantageous over the traditional skin-marker-based optical motion capture systems for being marker-less, portable, cost-effective, and easy-to-use in real workplaces. While several studies have demonstrated the validity/reliability of the Kinect for posture measurements especially during gait trials, its capability to adequately drive a detailed spine musculoskeletal model for injury risk assessments remains to be investigated. Lumbosacral (L5-S1) load predictions of a... 

Motion capture systems are used to gauge the kinematic features of the motion in numerous fields of research. Despite superb accuracy performance, the commercial systems are costly and difficult to use. To solve these issues, Kinect has been proposed as a low-priced markerless motion capture sensor, and its accuracy has been assessed using previous motion capture systems. However, in many of these studies, the anatomical joint angles captured using the Kinect are compared to the 3D rotation angles reported by the gold standard motion capture systems. These incompatibilities in the determination of the human joint angles can lead to higher error estimation. To accomplish a valid accuracy... 

Due to various applications of human motion capture techniques, developing low-cost methods that would be applicable in nonlaboratory environments is under consideration. MEMS inertial sensors and Kinect are two low-cost devices that can be utilized in home-based motion capture systems, e.g., home-based rehabilitation. In this work, an unscented Kalman filter approach was developed based on the complementary properties of Kinect and the inertial sensors to fuse the orientation data of these two devices for human arm motion tracking during both stationary shoulder joint position and human body movement. A new measurement model of the fusion algorithm was obtained that can compensate for the... 

Affordable motion sensors that are recently developed for video gaming have formed a budding line of research in the field of physical rehabilitation. These sensors have been used in many task-based applications to analyze the patients' status based on their completion of assigned tasks. However, as the accuracy of such sensors is lower than that of the clinical ones, their measured data has had very limited use in quantitative motion analysis to this date. The aim of this article is to determine Kinect's ability and accuracy in calculating higher-order kinematic parameters, such as velocity and acceleration, in hand movements. Four methods, i.e. moving average, Butterworth filter, B-spline,... 

Purpose: There is a scarcity of studies evaluating the variability of couplings between proximal segments (trunk, pelvis, and thigh) in individuals with patellofemoral pain (PFP) while emerging evidence has suggested that aberrant motions of trunk and pelvis can have a contributory role in the etiology of PFP. The purpose of this study was, therefore, to evaluate the trunk, pelvis, and thigh intersegmental coordination variability in PFP compared with healthy individuals. Methods: Thirty-four participants (17 with PFP and 17 healthy controls) walked (at preferred speed) and ran (at preferred and fixed speed) on a treadmill each trial for 30 seconds. Three-dimensional kinematics were recorded... 

Objective: Spine kinematics, kinetics, and trunk muscle activities were evaluated during different stages of a fatigue-induced symmetric lifting task over time. Background: Due to neuromuscular adaptations, postural behaviors of workers during lifting tasks are affected by fatigue. Comprehensive aspects of these adaptations remain to be investigated. Method: Eighteen volunteers repeatedly lifted a box until perceived exhaustion. Body center of mass (CoM), trunk and box kinematics, and feet center of pressure (CoP) were estimated by a motion capture system and force-plate. Electromyographic (EMG) signals of trunk/abdominal muscles were assessed using linear and nonlinear approaches. The L5-S1...