Abstract
Sounds produced by the articulation of joints have been shown to contain information characteristic of underlying joint health, morphology, and loading. In this work, we explore the use of a novel form factor for non-invasively acquiring acoustic/vibrational signals from the knee joint: an instrumented glove with a fingertip-mounted accelerometer. We validated the glove-based approach by comparing it to conventional mounting techniques (tape and foam microphone pads) in an experimental framework previously shown to reliably alter healthy knee joint sounds (vertical leg press). Measurements from healthy subjects (N = 11) in this proof-of-concept study demonstrated a highly consistent, monotonic, and significant (p < 0.01) increase in low-frequency signal root-mean-squared (RMS) amplitude—a straightforward metric relating to joint grinding loudness—with increasing vertical load across all three techniques. This finding suggests that a glove-based approach is a suitable alternative for collecting joint sounds that eliminates the need for consumables like tape and the interface noise associated with them.
Highlights
Injuries and chronic disorders affecting joints are pervasive and degrade quality of life for millions of individuals [1,2]
While there is no standard value for acceptable reliability using intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), a general rule suggests that values between 0.5 and 0.75 indicate moderate reliability, values between 0.75 and 0.9 indicate good reliability, and values greater than 0.90 indicate excellent reliability [17]
Validation was further conducted through repeatability testing, which indicated that our glove-based system was able to produce consistent results, under conditions of consistent fingertip contact force, and a high level of agreement with conventional techniques used to couple vibration sensors to skin
Summary
Injuries and chronic disorders affecting joints are pervasive and degrade quality of life for millions of individuals [1,2]. The current diagnostic standard for acute joint injury and chronic conditions such as osteoarthritis involves a combination of medical imaging, which can be costly and time-intensive, and physical examination, which often relies on subjective evaluations made on the part of either the clinician or the patient. These methods are not ideally suited to longitudinal, comprehensive monitoring of joint health, which may benefit recovery. These vibrations produce an acoustic response in the surrounding media, which is why the signal is often termed a “joint sound” or “acoustic emission.”
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