Reliability test of smartphone-based leg-joint position-sense measurement in people of all ages

Abstract

Purpose This study investigated the reliability of a smartphone based test of lower limb joint position sense. Methods The 69 selected subjects were all ages. Ankle, knee, and hip joint position sense were measured using the Sensor Kinetics Pro application on a Galaxy 8 smartphone. The subjects were requested to remember any angle and then to reproduce the angle after 10 seconds. The reliability of the smartphone application was confirmed using the test retest method. Results The results showed very high reliability for the ankle and knee joints (intraclass correlation [ICC]>0.75) and significantly high correlations (r>0.70, r>0.50, p<0.01). In contrast, hip joint flexion and extension showed low reliability (ICC<0.40) and no significant correlation (r<0.30, p>0.01), while hip joint adduction and abduction showed high reliability (ICC>0.60) and significantly high correlation (r>0.30, p<0.01). Conclusion The findings of the present study reveal that a smartphone can be a sufficiently useful device for measuring joint position sense.