AN ELASTIC EXERCISE BAND MOUNTED WITH A BANDCIZER™ CAN DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN COMMONLY PRESCRIBED HOME EXERCISES FOR...

Home-exercise is commonly prescribed for rehabilitation of the shoulder following injury. There is a lack of technology available to monitor if the patient performs the exercises as prescribed.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the validity of using three dimensional (3D) gyroscope data recorded with the Bandcizer™ sensor to differentiate between three elastic band exercises performed in the shoulder joint: abduction, flexion, and external rotation.

Concurrent validity study.

This study was performed over two phases. In the first phase, 20 subjects performed three sets of 10 of shoulder abduction, external rotation and flexion exercises with a Thera-Band mounted with a Bandcizer, while supervised by a physical therapist. The Bandcizer has an inbuilt three-dimensional gyroscope, capable of measuring angular rotation. Gyroscope data were analyzed in Matlab, and a one-way ANOVA was used to test for significant differences between each of the three exercises. An algorithm was then created in Matlab based on the exercise-data from the gyroscope, to enable differentiation between the three shoulder exercises. Twenty new subjects were then recruited to cross-validate the algorithm and investigate if the algorithm could differentiate between the three different shoulder exercises.

A blinded assessor using the Matlab algorithm could correctly identify 56 out of 60 exercise sets. The kappa agreement for the three exercises ranged between 0.86-0.91.

The ability to differentiate between the home exercises performed by patients after shoulder injury has great implications for future clinical practice and research. When home exercises are the treatments-of-choice, clinicians will be able to quantify if the patient performed the exercise as intended. Further research should be aimed at investigating the feasibility of using the Bandcizer™ in a home-based environment.

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