SMARTSENS: Smart wear for sensing the neuromusculoskeletal system during human movement in vivo

Introduction

Neurological injuries such as stroke or spinal cord injury leave 5 million people disabled worldwide annually, drastically impairing individuals' ability to move independently. The main element hampering the efficacy of current neuro-rehabilitation procedures is the inability to sense the activity of neural cells involved in the control of movement, along with the movement-generating mechanical force produced by innervated muscle-tendon units, in the intact moving human in vivo.

Current Technologies

Current technologies for sensing the neuromusculoskeletal system rely on:

• Expensive
• Large
• Bulky sensing devices

These devices can only be used in the highly controlled settings of research laboratories. Therefore, a wearable, rapid-to-wear system that could track function in a person’s motor neuron activity, along with associated function in muscle, tendon, and joint function, would revolutionize current neuro-rehabilitation paradigms.

SMARTSENS Solution

SMARTSENS proposes a fully wearable, non-invasive solution to monitor a range of clinically relevant neuromuscular parameters, which currently could only be extracted in constrained laboratory settings via lengthy procedures.

Features of SMARTSENS

• Enables measuring information during daily life activities
• Utilizes sensorized smart wear that is unobtrusive and rapid to wear

This will enable continuous monitoring of the human neuromusculoskeletal system, which will disrupt current movement-measuring and diagnostic systems. It will allow for a causal understanding of the activity of neural and musculoskeletal structures in vivo at a resolution not considered before.