An Inertial Measurement Unit-Based Wireless System for Shoulder Motion Assessment in Patients with Cervical Spinal Cord Injury: A Validation Pilot Study in a Clinical Setting

Abstract

Residual motion of upper limbs in individuals who experienced cervical spinal cord injury (CSCI) is vital to achieve functional independence. Several interventions were developed to restore shoulder range of motion (ROM) in CSCI patients. However, shoulder ROM assessment in clinical practice is commonly limited to use of a simple goniometer. Conventional goniometric measurements are operator-dependent and require significant time and effort. Therefore, innovative technology for supporting medical personnel in objectively and reliably measuring the efficacy of treatments for shoulder ROM in CSCI patients would be extremely desirable. This study evaluated the validity of a customized wireless wearable sensors (Inertial Measurement Units—IMUs) system for shoulder ROM assessment in CSCI patients in clinical setting. Eight CSCI patients and eight healthy controls performed four shoulder movements (forward flexion, abduction, and internal and external rotation) with dominant arm. Every movement was evaluated with a goniometer by different testers and with the IMU system at the same time. Validity was evaluated by comparing IMUs and goniometer measurements using Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) and Limits of Agreement (LOA). inter-tester reliability of IMUs and goniometer measurements was also investigated. Preliminary results provide essential information on the accuracy of the proposed wireless wearable sensors system in acquiring objective measurements of the shoulder movements in CSCI patients.

Wearable Movement Sensors for Rehabilitation: From Technology to Clinical Practice

“…Bravi et al (2021) [ 5 ] investigated the validity of a sensor-based system for shoulder range of motion assessment in cervical spinal cord injury patients. The sensor-system consists of two IMU sensors placed on the wrist and upper arm.…”

Reliability and Discriminative Validity of Wearable Sensors for the Quantification of Upper Limb Movement Disorders in Individuals with Dyskinetic Cerebral Palsy

“…However, very few studies have explored the reliability of IMU measures during functional upper limb tasks. Studies focusing on upper limb movements have mostly evaluated the reliability of range of motion [ 40 , 41 ] or 3D trajectories [ 42 ] in both healthy and pathological populations. The current study did not focus on spatial measures such as joint angles because the sensor fusion algorithms required to obtain correct joint angles from acceleration and angular velocity values are complicated for upper limb joint angles and have not been validated in pathological populations such as CP.…”

Assessment of shoulder range of motion using a commercially available wearable sensor—a validation study

“…The results of this analysis are conventionally displayed graphically using a scatter plot, in which the Y axis shows the difference between two paired measurements, and the X axis represents the average of these measurements (10,11). For the comparison of OMC system and IMU measurements, acceptable LoA was determined a priori to be within 10° of no difference between measurements (12,13). The relationship between kinematic data collected by the OMC and IMU systems were analysed by a linear regression, where the slope of the regression line and the coefficient of determination (R 2 ) were calculated.…”