Abstract
In recent years, fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) are becoming increasingly attractive for sensing applications in biomechanics and rehabilitation engineering due to their advantageous properties like small size, light weight, biocompatibility, chemical inertness, multiplexing capability and immunity to electromagnetic interference (EMI). They also offer a high-performance alternative to conventional technologies, either for measuring a variety of physical parameters or for performing high-sensitivity biochemical analysis. FBG-based sensors demonstrated their feasibility for specific sensing applications in aeronautic, automotive, civil engineering structure monitoring and undersea oil exploration; however, their use in the field of biomechanics and rehabilitation applications is very recent and its practicality for full-scale implementation has not yet been fully established. They could be used for detecting strain in bones, pressure mapping in orthopaedic joints, stresses in intervertebral discs, chest wall deformation, pressure distribution in Human Machine Interfaces (HMIs), forces induced by tendons and ligaments, angles between body segments during gait, and many others in dental biomechanics. This article aims to provide a comprehensive overview of all the possible applications of FBG sensing technology in biomechanics and rehabilitation and the status of ongoing researches up-to-date all over the world, demonstrating the FBG advances over other existing technologies.
Highlights
In the last decade, fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) have shown a great potential for applications in the field of biomechanics and rehabilitation engineering due to their prominent advantages such as their small size, biocompatibility, chemical inertness, immunity to electromagnetic interference (EMI) and multiplexing capability [1,2]
The results show that contact force and pressure measurements using FBG sensors in the hip joints exhibited repeatability and the polyimide sheath increased the sensitivity of the contact force sensor, when compared to the unsheathed sensor of the same diameter
(Figure15(a)), allowing for the visualization of the hand movement in real-time on a PC which can be used to provide information about the hand angles, strength, and movement range. This wearable system could have a great potential in physical therapy applications, in particular for hand-impaired people, and when studying human kinematics, among others. It is clearly evident from the literature that FBGs can be successfully employed in a wide range of applications in biomechanics and rehabilitation engineering
Summary
Fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) have shown a great potential for applications in the field of biomechanics and rehabilitation engineering due to their prominent advantages such as their small size, biocompatibility, chemical inertness, immunity to electromagnetic interference (EMI) and multiplexing capability [1,2]. These characteristics make FBGs suitable for human body uses that adapt to the sensor material so that they can be used for in vivo measurement and can be left for long-term monitoring [3]. They have been demonstrated for measurement of a wide variety of parameters; including strain inside and on the surface of intact and plated bones, shrinkage stresses in bone cement during polymerization, pressure mapping in orthopaedic joints, stresses in intervertebral discs, deformation in chest wall to study lung biomechanics, pressure distribution in Human Machine
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