A monitoring system for walking rehabilitation after THR or TKR surgeries.

After total hip replacement and total knee replacement, patients are highly recommended to take walking rehabilitation, during which time, the weight loads on the limb should be limited to a certain range, which is difficult for patients to control on their own. To improve the accuracy and reliability of the traditional method for walking rehabilitation, we proposed a monitoring system comprised of pressure sensors, an analog digital converter, a micro-control unit, Bluetooth modules and a smart-phone application. Except for this application, the system is embedded in the customized shoes. When patients wear the shoes, the weight load data will be detected by the pressure sensors, and transmitted to the smart-phone application wirelessly in real time. Whenever the system detects too much weight on a patient's limb or an impending patient fall and abnormal gait, an algorithm, also proposed in this study, instructs the smart phone to sound an alarm. In addition, we present and test a gait evaluation algorithm that analyzes the patient's gait. Measurement results show that the accuracy of the system is 0.5kg.