Software for Physiotherapeutic Rehabilitation: A Study with Accelerometry

Objective: The present study aimed to analyze, using accelerometry, movement patterns of activities performed during physical therapy rehabilitation in order to develop a software for physical therapy monitoring. The system is able to receive the accelerometry data through Bluetooth protocol, perform the processing to generate graphs in real time and store them in text files, in order to provide data for further analysis. Methods: This is an experimental, descriptive, cross-sectional work, with sample for convenience. The study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee (CEP) involving human beings from the Health Sciences Center of the Federal University of Pernambuco (CCS/UFPE) obtained the Advice Number: 3540474. In the study 10 healthy subjects aged between 20 and 40 years participated. For the development of the system was used Processing, which is an open source programming language based on JAVA. Processing contains computational tools ideal for the development of user interfaces as well as tools for processing and manipulating data from computer input and output devices. For the testing phase, the activities of sit/stand and walk were performed. The accelerometer was positioned on the lumbar spine of the participants. Results and discussion: According to the tests conducted the X and Z axes of the accelerometer were selected for analysis and these two satisfactory to identify the movements of sit/stand and walk of the volunteers. In this way, a limit value is determined that differentiates the sitting from the raised state. Thus, it was considered that the Z axis corresponds to the activity of sitting/getting up, whereas the X axis corresponds to the activity of walking. Conclusion: It was concluded in this study that the software developed is able to detect and monitor patterns of body movements through the oscillations captured by the accelerometers, suggesting that it can assist health professionals both in the assessment and in the physical therapy rehabilitation.