Preventing, Monitoring and Treating Foot Conditions in Medical Robotic Rehabilitation

Abstract

The standing posture, gradually carried out, is one of the best and efficient activities for supporting the neuro-physio-rehabilitation of the bedridden people suffering from diverse pathologies. It allows the increasing of the amount of circulating oxygen within the human tissues, hence, a major vascularization. This latter produces a certain amount of heat delivered by the body, allowing to study different pathologies. Clubfoot is a particular spastic disorder that causes weakness in the feet and provoke patients to stand on their ankles. In post acquired spastic foot (non-congenital cases), that can be caused by stroke or brain injuries, rehabilitation treatments need to be early applied helping to maintain physical correction of the body and regain strength on weak muscles. The paper treats the modeling and the measurement to be performed on feet in order to, first prevent clubfoot, if insisting to try to take care of it, and after, to extract information about it in the effort to prevent other subsequent pathologies. Infrared thermal sensors are used to extract necessary information about temperature variation on the ankles through gradually verticalization of the body using a medical robotic bed and a digital model that has been traced out to make comparison and perform deep analysis.