Design and Development of Textile Sensor for Kyphosis Detection

Abstract

The proposed system is to design and develop a textile sensor. People suffering from kyphosis disease may have a hunchedback appearance due to forward bend in spinal cord. The textile sensor is based on piezoresistivity, where change in resistance is observed due to mechanical bending of the sensor. Thesensor is designed in such a way that it can detect any bend in the spinal cord. The initial design has been developed using a flex sensor. The proposed sensor is made up of five layers in total with a piezoresistive layer sandwiched in between two conductive layers. The top and bottom of the structure is then covered with a dielectric layer to form a complete wearable textile sensor. The performance of the sensor is then analyzed for two outer covers, felt and polyester. The piezoresistive material used in this sensor is velostat. The performance of the flex sensor and the developed piezoresistive textile sensor have been compared and analysed.