Development of a miniaturized motion sensor for tracking warning signs of low-back pain

TL;DR

This study presents a new wearable IMU-based device for monitoring low-back pain indicators, demonstrating its accuracy and potential for clinical application in tracking specific biomechanical features associated with LBP.

Contribution

A novel miniaturized, non-invasive wearable sensor for detecting biomechanical features related to low-back pain, validated with promising metrological performance.

Findings

IMU can detect lumbar lordosis and hip-shoulder dissociation

Device shows low noise level and no drift in measurements

Preliminary results suggest potential for clinical LBP assessment

Abstract

Low-back pain (LBP) is a widespread disease which can also be highly disabling, but physicians lack of basic understanding and diagnosis tools. During this study, we have designed and built a new wearable device capable of detecting features helpful in LBP follow-up while being non-invasive. The device has been carefully validated, and shows good metrological features, with small noise level ($\sigma$ = 1{\textdegree}) and no observable drift. Two simple exercises were proposed to two young volunteers, one of them with LBP history. These exercises are designed to target two characteristics: the lumbar lordosis angle and the hip \& shoulder dissociation. Even if no general rules can be extracted from this study, we have shown that Inertial Measurement Units (IMU) are able to pick up those characteristics and the obtained values are meaningful refereeing to LBP disease. Henceforth, we are confident in going to clinical studies to investigate the link between back related feature and LBP, in particular the hip \& shoulder dissociation which is poorly documented.