Ambulatory Function Monitor of the Amputees with Their Prosthesis

The monitoring of an individual’s ambulatory function and recovery condition has gained considerable interest in the field of medicine, physiotherapy, behavioral sciences and psychophysiology. A number of monitoring systems that measure physical activity have been widely used for research and clinical evaluation. However, due to their costly price, the technologies are only available to a limited number of selected patients for the purpose of research during a certain period of time. They are not significantly beneficial on an individual cases basis. Moreover, to date, these technologies place very little focus on the study of the ambulatory function of the amputees. The present paper describes a low cost monitoring system developed in our laboratory using an accelerometer as the sensor. The monitoring system is small, can be inserted into the pylon of the prosthesis to provide continuous 24-hour monitoring of the amputee’s activities under free living environment. The monitoring system is located in the pylon to ensure the originality of the data. In addition, the amputees will not aware of being monitored and it requires no maintenance from the amputee. Furthermore, the risk of the sensor being destroyed by a third party unintentionally is minimized. The recorded data will be analyzed to (1) identify the problems faced by the amputee (e.g., not being able to use the prosthesis comfortably to perform certain tasks due to the inflexibility of the prosthesis) and (2) monitor the amputees’ progress in his or her daily activities after medical treatments or any changes to their prosthesis. The monitoring system not only helps the amputees to obtain more effective care from the clinicians and researchers, but also help them, especially those fully depending on outside funding, to determine the most suitable prosthesis.