Skeletal muscle monitoring provides valuable information about the muscle contractile properties which could be useful in various clinical applications. A wearable ultrasonic sensor (WUS) was constructed using a 110 µm thick polyvinylidene fluoride polymer piezoelectric film to perform a continuous hands-free muscle monitoring. The lightweight and flexible properties of WUS enables the stable attachment to the skin surface without affecting the tissue motion of interest, which results in reduced motion artifacts. In order to perform reliable estimation of tissue thicknesses by the WUS in an ultrasonic pulse echo mode, the accuracy of selected signal analysis techniques was evaluated using a laser displacement measurement result as a reference. Then, a mechanical simulation experiment is conducted to evaluate the accuracy and repeatability of the WUS measurement system. In addition, the effects of moving averaging on the signal-to-noise ratio of the ultrasonic signals and the estimation accuracy of the tissue thickness were investigated. In order to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed ultrasound technique for in-vivo measurements, continuous monitoring of the lateral head of triceps muscle of three healthy male subjects were monitored using the WUS. The tissue thickness changes due to the evoked muscle contraction by an electromyostimulation (EMS) at various pulse repetition frequencies were monitored. I thank Mr. Alex Proctor for assisting and technical supporting me in designing the mechanical phantom. I would like to thank my friends, Mr. Dipayan Mitra, Mr. Sean Trudel, and Mr. Shanmugaraja K.V who helped me in all possible ways. I would also like to thank Carleton University for supporting the work. I would like to express my gratitude towards my parents and my brother for their unwavering support.
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