Skip to main content

Advertisement

Springer Nature Link
Log in

A mobile device application applied to low back disorders

  • Published:
Multimedia Tools and Applications Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Many muscular function assessments require the monitoring of muscular activity in different environments. This can happen in the gymnasium during a training session or while practising a sport; at work, where movements and specific actions are executed; at school, where the child adopts an incorrect posture, or even while we walk. In this paper, we propose a system to allow the assessment of the muscular condition in any of these environments in a comfortable and simple way for the patient and using the advances in wireless communications. Just a wireless biomonitor (we have used the ME6000 biomonitor, a medical portable equipment of very small dimensions) and one PDA or mobile phone with wireless interface are needed. The medical device is configured from the mobile device. Then, wireless communications are used to transmit online the electromyographic signals registered by the medical equipment to a mobile device. The specific protocol used by the medical device is implemented to carry out the communication. There are two ways to configure the system: offline and online. In offline mode, once all the information is received, it is sent to a server using a connection to the Internet instead of the online way, where this information is sent simultaneously. The server includes a background application to process the information in real-time with the aim to evaluate the function of the muscle during the exercise and to establish healthy behaviours for the patient. Then, this information can be consulted by the specialist and also by the client using the PDA or mobile phone to show the report. A prototype of this system has been developed and implemented. The system has been evaluated by a preliminary usability, reliability, feasibility and communication performance study.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11
Fig. 12
Fig. 13

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Woolf AD, Pfleger B (2003) Burden of major musculoskeletal conditions. Bull World Health Organ 81(9):646–656

    Google Scholar 

  2. Wooton R, Patterson V (2006) Introduction to Telemedicine. 2nd edn. RSM

  3. Basmajian JV, De Luca CJ (1985) Muscles Alive: Their Functions Revealed by Electromyography, 5th edn. Williams & Wilkins, USA

    Google Scholar 

  4. Jonsson B (1973) Electromyographic kinesiology. Desmedt J. (ed.) New Developments in EMG and Clinical Neurophysiology, pp 498–501

  5. Istepanian RSH, Jovanov E, Zhang YT (2004) M-Health: Beyond Seamless Mobility for Global Wireless Healthcare Connectivity-Editorial, in. IEEE trans. inf. technol. biomed. 8(4):405–414 December

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Stanford V (2002) Using pervasive computing to deliver elder care. IEEE Pervasive Comput 1:10–13 doi:10.1109/MPRV.2002.993139

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Korhonen I, Parkka J, van Gils M (2003) Health monitoring in the home of the future. IEEE Eng Med Biol Mag 22(3):66–73 doi:10.1109/MEMB.2003.1213628

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Warren S (2003) Beyond telemedicine: Infrastructures for intelligent home care technology, in Pre-ICADI Workshop technology for aging, disability, and independence, London, U.K., 26–27, June

  9. Winters JM, Wang Y, Winters JM (2003) Wearable sensors and telerehabilitation: Integrating intelligent telerehabilitation assistants with a model for optimizing home therapy. IEEE Eng Med Biol Mag 22(3):56–65 doi:10.1109/MEMB.2003.1213627

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Budinger TF (2003) Biomonitoring with wireless communications. Annu Rev Biomed Eng 5:383–412 doi:10.1146/annurev.bioeng.5.040202.121653

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Tsai CC, Lee G, Raab F, Norman GJ, Sohn T, Griswold WG, Patrick K (2007) Usability and Feasibility of PmEB: a Mobile Phone Application for Monitoring Real Time Caloric Balance. Mobile Networks and Applications 12(2):173–184

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Nazeran H, Setty S, Haltiwanger E, Gonzalez VA (2004) PDA-based flexible telecommunication system for telemedicine applications, in 26th conference proceedings on engineering in medicine and biology society, pp. 2200–2203, September

  13. Lubrin E, Lawrence E, Navarro KF (2006) MoteCare:an adaptive smart BAN health monitoring system, in Proceedings of the 24th IASTED international conference on biomedical engineering, pp. 60–67, Innsbruck, Austria

  14. Mohomed I, Ebling MR, Jerome W, Misra A (2006) HARMONI: Motivation for a health-oriented adaptive remote monitoring middleware, in fourth international workshop on ubiquitous computing for pervasive healthcare applications (UbiHealth 2006), Irvine, California, USA, September

  15. Vontetsianos T, et al (2006) Home based integrated care in patients with chronic respiratory failure with the use of e-health services, in proceedings of international educational and networking forum for ehealth, telemedicine and health ICT

  16. Husemann D, Narayanaswa C, Nidd M (2004) Personal mobile hub, in eighth IEEE international symposium on wearable computers (ISWC’04), pp. 85–91

  17. Choi J, Yoo S, Park H, Chun J (2006) MobileMed: a PDA-based mobile clinical information system. IEEE Trans Inf Technol Biomed 627–635 doi:10.1109/TITB.2006.874201

  18. Lin Y-H, Jan I-C, Chow-In Ko P, Chen Y-Y, Wong J-M, Jan G-J (2004) A wireless PDA-based physiological monitoring system for patient transport. IEEE Trans Inf Technol Biomed 8(4):439–447 doi:10.1109/TITB.2004.837829

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Durresi M, Barolli L (2007) Wireless communications for health monitoring on highways, in proceeding of the 27th international conference on distributed computing systems workshops, pp. 37

  20. Guerri JC, Esteve M, Palau C, Monfort M, Sarti MA (2000) A software tool to acquire, synchronise and playback multimedia data: an application to kinesiology, in computer methods and programs in biomedicine, pp. 51–58, Elsevier

  21. Sarti MA, Monfort M, Guerri JC, Esteve M, Palau C (2000) Multimedia synchronization system. Application in functional anatomy of the locomotor system, in European Journal of Anatomy, pp. 34

  22. Guerri JC, Palau C, Pajares cA, Belda A, Cermeño JJ, Esteve M (2003) A multimedia telemedicine system to asses muscoskeletal disorders, in IEEE international conference on multimedia & expo (ICME 2003), Baltimore

  23. Riggs R, Taivalsaari A, VandenBrink M (2001) Programming wireless devices with the Java 2 platform. Addition Wesley

  24. Bangnan X, Hischke S, Walke B (2003) The role of ad-hoc networking in future wireless communications, in proceedings of international conference on communication technology, pp. 1353–1358, April

  25. Kimm H, Shin SY (2005) Efficient use of Java MIDP record management system in wireless devices, ieee international conference on electro information technology, pp. 113–116, April

  26. Borenstein DG, Wiesel SW, Boden SD (1995) Mechanical disorders of the lumbo-sacral spine, in low back pain: Medical diagnosis and comprehensive management, pp. 183–217, Philadelphia

  27. Conforto S, D’Alessio T, Pignatelli S (1999) Optimal rejection of movements artefacts from myoelectric signals by means of a Wavelet filtering procedure. J Electromyogr Kinesiol 9:47–57 doi:10.1016/S1050-6411(98)00023-6

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Floyd WF, Silver PHS (1995) The function of erectores spinae muscles in certain movements and postures in man. J Physiol 129:184–203

    Google Scholar 

  29. Paquet N, Malouin F, Richards CL (1994) Hip-spine movement interaction and muscle activation patterns during sagittal trunk movements in low back patients. Spine 19:596–603 doi:10.1097/00007632-199403000-00016

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Palmblad M, Tiplady B (2004) Electronic diaries and questionnaires: designing user interfaces that are easy for all patients to use, quality of life research, pp. 1199–1207, Academic Publishers, Kluwer

  31. Scholtz J, Consolvo S (2004) Towards a discipline for evaluating ubiquitous computing applications. Intel Corporation

  32. Zhang T, Rau P, Salvendy G (2007) Developing Instrument for Handset Usability Evaluation: A Survey Study, Part I, Human-Computer Interaction. Interaction Design and Usability. LNCS 4550:662–671

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. Kaufman DR, Patela VL, Hillimana C, Morinb PC, Pevznera J, Weinstockb RS, Golandd R, Sheaa S, Starrena J (2003) Usability in the real world: assessing medical information technologies in patients’ homes. J Biome info 36(1–2):45–60 February–April

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. Katarzyna W, Richard B, Aart VH, Dimitri K (2005) Victor N Measurements based performance evaluation of 3G wireless networks supporting m-health services, Multimedia computing and networking. Conference 5680:176–187 EEUU

    Google Scholar 

  35. Sakamoto T, Hui W, Daming W (2006) Performance evaluation of twelve-lead electrocardiogram telemonitor utilizing 3G cellular phone, in Sixth IEEE international conference on computer and information technology, pp. 83–87

  36. Chu Y, Ganz A (2004) A Mobile Teletrauma System Using 3G Networks, in. IEEE trans inf technol biomed 8(4):456–462 December

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. Viruete Navarro EA, Ruiz Mas J, Fernández Navajas J, Peña Alcega C (2006) Performance of a 3G-Based Mobile Telemedicine System, in. Consumer commun netw conf 2:1023–1027

    Google Scholar 

  38. Shrout PE, Fleiss JL (1979) Intraclass correlations: uses in assessing rater reliability. Psychol Bull 86:420–428 doi:10.1037/0033-2909.86.2.420

    Article  Google Scholar 

  39. Rankin G, Stokes M (1998) Reliability of assessment tools in rehabilitation: an illustration of appropriate statistical analyses. Clin Rehabil 12:187–199 doi:10.1191/026921598672178340

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. Hopkins WG (2000) Measures of reliability in sports medicine and science. Sports Med 30:1–15 doi:10.2165/00007256-200030010-00001

    Article  Google Scholar 

  41. Sleivert GG, Wenger HA (1994) Reliability of measuring isometric and isokinetic peak torque, rate of torque development, integrated electromyography, and tibial nerve-conduction velocity. Arch Phys Med Rehabil 75:1315–1331

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia within the MIQUEL (TEC2007-68119-C02-01/TCM) project.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Telecommunications and Multimedia Applications (iTEAM), Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Camino de Vera, 46071, Valencia, Spain

    Juan C. Guerri, Ana Belén Antón & Ana Pajares

  2. Departamento de Didáctica de la Expresión Corporal, Unidad docente de Educación Física, Universidad de Valencia, Alcalde Reig 8, Valencia, Spain

    Manuel Monfort

  3. Departamento de Anatomía y Embriología Humana, Universidad de Valencia, Blasco Ibáñez 15, 46010, Valencia, Spain

    Daniel Sánchez

Authors
  1. Juan C. Guerri
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  2. Ana Belén Antón
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  3. Ana Pajares
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  4. Manuel Monfort
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  5. Daniel Sánchez
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Juan C. Guerri.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Guerri, J.C., Antón, A.B., Pajares, A. et al. A mobile device application applied to low back disorders. Multimed Tools Appl 42, 317–340 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-008-0252-x

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-008-0252-x

Keywords