A BSN based service for post-surgical knee rehabilitation at home

The paper illustrates a prototype of an end-to-end service to support unassisted rehabilitation of motor functions. The core of the developed solution is a system able to analyze the patient movements during the execution of the prescribed exercises. The motion analysis relies on real-time evaluations of biomechanical parameters, derived from inertial and magnetic data provided by a wireless body sensor network, worn by the patient while he is doing his exercises. The method uses an approach based on complementary filters and addresses a number of challenges, such as compensating the incorrect positioning of motes and managing perturbations of the Earth magnetic field. Besides, the solution provides the patient with a number of "coaching functions", aimed at helping him in getting the best from his training at home, and with a videoconferencing tool to be used whenever the direct evaluation of the therapist is needed. Although this system can have a wider application field, in this work the focus is on the knee rehabilitation after the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction, in order to demonstrate the suitability of this solution to address specific clinical requirements. Preliminary results on this case study are provided.