Automatic Measurements of Neck Angles toward the Bedside Treatment for the Dysphagia Patients at the Community-Based...

For the elderly with dysphagiais, postural changes are a popular method to reduce the risk of aspiration pneumonia. Among them, the reclining position, a postural change set by the bed angles, has been widely used in practical settings. However, setting the reclining positions is difficult since all beds do not have a system to measure angles especially at the nursing facilities and patient's homes. Moreover, a anatomically critical angle is the one created by the larynx and the pharynx against the horizontal line, but we cannot check them without a medical equipment, such as X-ray or Videofluoroscopy (VF).We have been developing a smart-phone based wearable technology which can measure the neck angles automatically in realtime. In this research, we conducted a study to compare the IMU measured angles with the larynx and pharynx angles from the VF images, and analyzed if IMU can measure these angles properly. Additionally, we compared three angles with: 1) bed angles, 2) neck angles measured by IMU, and 3) bed angles set by a dysphagia treatment specialist, to show how different neck angles were set in the bedside practice. We will also discuss the IMU's future applications to keep the elderly eat safely in the community.