Rehabilitation Tool for Ankle Sprains
Written on June 1st , 2015 by Elton Cheng
Overview
My group senior design project at UCSD was to create a rehabilatation tool to regain ankle mobility for a recovering ankle sprain. Our research showed that although there were many inexpensive tools and exercises used by physical therapists (PT) to help patients recover, if these tools or exercises were used incorrectly or without proper training and guidance from PTs, the muscle and tendons surrounding the ankle can be reinjured.
Because of this, our goal for this project was to design and prototype an inexpensive tool that can be used by both physical therapists and patients such that the exercises can be completed properly and easily with little to no guidance.
After a year long effort of research, design choices, and prototyping, the final result was J.A.N.E (Just Ankle Needs for Everyone), a rehabilatation tool for ankle inversion and eversion exercises. Through video analysis done with ImageJ and Matlab, we found that our device reduced the number of degree of freedoms by restricting the motion of the foot in the z-axis. This reduces the chances of the exercise being done improperly and causing reinjury to the ankle.
Further information about the design and analysis of J.A.N.E can be found here.