Wearable Knee Health Rehabilitation Assessment using Acoustical Emissions

We have developed a novel, wearable sensing system based on miniature piezoelectric contact microphones for measuring the acoustical emissions from the knee during movement. The system consists of two contact microphones, positioned on the medial and lateral sides of the patella, connected to custom, analog pre-amplifier circuits and a microcontroller for digitization and data storage on a secure digital card. In addition to the acoustical sensing, the system includes two integrated inertial measurement sensors including accelerometer and gyroscope modalities to enable joint angle calculations; these sensors, with digital outputs, are connected directly to the same microcontroller. The system provides low noise, accurate joint acoustical emission and angle measurements in a wearable form factor and has several hours of battery life.