Analysis of Skeletal Muscles Contractility Using Smart SEMG-Based Socks

Abstract

Surface electromyography increasingly plays an important role for prevention, diagnosis and rehabilitation in healthcare field. In this context, the continuous monitoring of the electrical potentials produced by muscles appears to be effective to detect abnormal events. The recent progresses in surface electromyography technologies have allowed for the development of low invasive and reliable wearable devices. These devices promote long-term monitoring; however, they are often very expensive and not easy to be positioned appropriately. Moreover, they use disposable pre-gelled electrodes that can cause skin redness. In this work, to overcome these issues, a prototype of new smart socks has been realized, implementing reusable and high biocompatible hybrid polymer electrolytes. These electrodes provide a comfortable lower limb long-term monitoring avoiding a difficult daily repositioning by users. The realized socks are lightweight and integrates all electronic components for the pre-elaboration and the wireless data sending. The Gastrocnemius-Tibialis muscles were selected and analyzed due to their relevance for assessment of age-related changes in gait, sarcopenia pathology, postural anomalies, fall risk, etc. In particular, in this paper an evaluation on the risk of falling detection by the system was considered as a case of study.