A Wearable Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulator

Abstract

Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT) is a condition that results in the formation of blood clots in deep veins of the lower leg or thigh in the human body and it becomes severe in the later stages making the patient fatal. The treatment for preventing severe DVT is provided as a means of therapy by giving a neuromuscular electrical stimulation at the site of DVT. Most of the available neuromuscular stimulation devices are not wearable, non-flexible, and non-user-friendly and they are not affordable to all people because of their high cost. Some of the available wearable neuromuscular stimulators are of disposable type (disposable after a few hours), and so it costs so much high for the user who needs to buy regularly for continuous therapy. Hence, a low-cost non-disposable type wearable neuromuscular electrical stimulator is proposed. In this work, a neuromuscular electrical stimulator is designed and tested using the Proteus simulation software. Pulse generator to generate required stimulation pulses of varying pulse widths between 10 µs and 1000µs with the pulse repetition rate of 1 Hz and a constant current regulator to deliver a constant current of 5 mA are the two most important blocks of the neuromuscular electrical stimulator design. The obtained results have met the requirements paving the way for future research work to develop a prototype.