Smartphone-based audio-biofeedback system for shoulder joint tele-rehabilitation

Abstract

Copyright © 2016 American Scientific Publishers All rights reserved. Shoulder pain is one of the most commonly occurring health conditions in ordinary people as a result of improper or excessive arm usage. Patients with shoulder pain are not able to move their arm normally and usually need to visit a healthcare center to get proper rehabilitation. However, there is a cost in traveling and an elaborate procedure is used by the physiotherapist. Most prior works in the literature have tried to improve the assessment method in terms of range of motion (ROM) angle movement because they are concerned about the accuracy and reliability of the measurement and disease consideration. In this work, we proposed a new tele-rehabilitation system using an audio-biofeedback (ABF) technique that can lead patients to improved rehabilitation performance compared to a previously developed system without auditory aid. Twenty volunteers (11 men and 9 women) participated in our experiment to compare performance between ABF and non-ABF systems. The result shows that the ABF system performed significantly better than non-ABF system for all three target angles of rehabilitation exercise (90, 120, and 150 degrees) (p < .001). Therefore, it can be concluded that using the proposed tele-rehabilitation system with ABF can lead patients to better rehab performance and would enable them to reduce traveling costs and time.