Current Status of Project:
In order to quantify spasticity in an inexpensive and portable manner, we will explore many possible solutions. The first solution we will investigate is use of a smartphone app. Smartphones are prevalent enough that many physicians already carry them in their pockets, making it an ideal chassis for our software. If it were possible to measure spasticity with just a phone app alone, then the feasibility of the technology would be extremely convenient and effectively of no cost to the hospital. The difficulty in this is that there are three key components that must be incorporated in order to quantify spasticity: velocity, resistance to movement, and range of motion. The built-in accelerometer on smartphones have the capability of measuring the first two easily, but the latter would be much more difficult. The obvious solution would be to use some sort of external device such as a force transducer. But we want to try our best to keep the design as simple as possible without unnecessary parts. We are currently talking about peripherals that could be attached to the smartphone in order to quantify the force that is required to push the leg. Since we are moving the leg at constant velocity (or very close to it at least), there are no visible cues to changes in force since acceleration is nearly zero (ignoring centripetal force since it does not quantify what we’re looking for). Thus, the only way to measure the force is directly through some sort of force transducer. Alternatively, we could utilize the pressure-sensitive screen of a smartphone to make it detect force in real-time. However, problems with this exist, the biggest being that current smartphone do not seem to be able to differentiate between different forces. In other words, they can detect that they are “being touched”, but not “how hard they are being touched”. Apple has a patent filed for a pressure sensitive screen, but it is not currently implemented on any device and it remains to be seen if it will be implemented on the iPhone 6, which has yet to be released as of the date of this writing.
Work planned for Next Week:
We are meeting with our client Dr. Engsberg at 3:00 pm on Monday afternoon. We plan to present our research findings this week with him as well as explore some other alternative solutions to solve the problem presented. While a smartphone approach seems elegant and cost-effective, we must not box ourselves in and consider all possibilities. Our previous findings indicate that many smartphones do not have pressure sensitivity on the screens, but we plan on looking into many more phone models to see if that is indeed the case.
Anything needed from client or TA before continuing work:
At our current project stage we do not need anything from our TA. We plan on exploring Dr. Engsberg’s laboratory to see if he has any equipment such as accelerometers or force transducers that can potentially be useful in the later stages of this project. We also plan on asking Dr. Engsberg whether or not this project has been attempted by other students, for us to have a better sense of this project as a whole. Again, since we are only at the stage of researching the problem at this point, we hope to not limit ourselves in our options.
In order to quantify spasticity in an inexpensive and portable manner, we will explore many possible solutions. The first solution we will investigate is use of a smartphone app. Smartphones are prevalent enough that many physicians already carry them in their pockets, making it an ideal chassis for our software. If it were possible to measure spasticity with just a phone app alone, then the feasibility of the technology would be extremely convenient and effectively of no cost to the hospital. The difficulty in this is that there are three key components that must be incorporated in order to quantify spasticity: velocity, resistance to movement, and range of motion. The built-in accelerometer on smartphones have the capability of measuring the first two easily, but the latter would be much more difficult. The obvious solution would be to use some sort of external device such as a force transducer. But we want to try our best to keep the design as simple as possible without unnecessary parts. We are currently talking about peripherals that could be attached to the smartphone in order to quantify the force that is required to push the leg. Since we are moving the leg at constant velocity (or very close to it at least), there are no visible cues to changes in force since acceleration is nearly zero (ignoring centripetal force since it does not quantify what we’re looking for). Thus, the only way to measure the force is directly through some sort of force transducer. Alternatively, we could utilize the pressure-sensitive screen of a smartphone to make it detect force in real-time. However, problems with this exist, the biggest being that current smartphone do not seem to be able to differentiate between different forces. In other words, they can detect that they are “being touched”, but not “how hard they are being touched”. Apple has a patent filed for a pressure sensitive screen, but it is not currently implemented on any device and it remains to be seen if it will be implemented on the iPhone 6, which has yet to be released as of the date of this writing.
Work planned for Next Week:
We are meeting with our client Dr. Engsberg at 3:00 pm on Monday afternoon. We plan to present our research findings this week with him as well as explore some other alternative solutions to solve the problem presented. While a smartphone approach seems elegant and cost-effective, we must not box ourselves in and consider all possibilities. Our previous findings indicate that many smartphones do not have pressure sensitivity on the screens, but we plan on looking into many more phone models to see if that is indeed the case.
Anything needed from client or TA before continuing work:
At our current project stage we do not need anything from our TA. We plan on exploring Dr. Engsberg’s laboratory to see if he has any equipment such as accelerometers or force transducers that can potentially be useful in the later stages of this project. We also plan on asking Dr. Engsberg whether or not this project has been attempted by other students, for us to have a better sense of this project as a whole. Again, since we are only at the stage of researching the problem at this point, we hope to not limit ourselves in our options.