Institute of Signal Processing and Wireless Communications, School of Engineering, Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Technikumstrasse 9, 8400 Winterthur, Switzerland.
Institute of Physiotherapy, School of Health Professions, Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Katharina-Sulzer-Platz 9, 8400 Winterthur, Switzerland.
Sensors (Basel). 2021 May 10;21(9):3297. doi: 10.3390/s21093297.
Neck pain is a frequent health complaint. Prolonged protracted malpositions of the head are associated with neck pain and headaches and could be prevented using biofeedback systems. A practical biofeedback system to detect malpositions should be realized with a simple measurement setup. To achieve this, a simple biomechanical model representing head orientation and translation relative to the thorax is introduced. To identify the parameters of this model, anthropometric data were acquired from eight healthy volunteers. In this work we determine (i) the accuracy of the proposed model when the neck length is known, (ii) the dependency of the neck length on the body height, and (iii) the impact of a wrong neck length on the models accuracy. The resulting model is able to describe the motion of the head with a maximum uncertainty of 5 mm only. To achieve this high accuracy the effective neck length must be known a priory. If however, this parameter is assumed to be a linear function of the palpable neck length, the measurement error increases. Still, the resulting accuracy can be sufficient to identify and monitor a protracted malposition of the head relative to the thorax.
颈部疼痛是一种常见的健康问题。头部长时间保持异常姿势会导致颈部疼痛和头痛，而生物反馈系统可以预防这种情况。一个实用的生物反馈系统应该使用简单的测量设置来检测异常姿势。为了实现这一目标，引入了一个简单的生物力学模型来表示头部相对于胸部的方向和位置。为了确定该模型的参数，从 8 名健康志愿者那里获取了人体测量数据。在这项工作中，我们确定了：（i）在已知颈部长度的情况下，所提出的模型的准确性；（ii）颈部长度与身高的依赖性；（iii）错误的颈部长度对模型准确性的影响。所得到的模型只能以最大 5 毫米的不确定度来描述头部的运动。为了实现这种高精度，必须预先知道有效颈部长度。然而，如果假设该参数是可触知的颈部长度的线性函数，则测量误差会增加。尽管如此，得到的准确性仍然足以识别和监测头部相对于胸部的长时间异常姿势。
