Development Of General Medical Body Pressure Distribution Measurement System

The body pressure distribution measurement technology is the research of theforce generated at the contact surface between the human body and any externalthings, which makes great significance in medical, bionics and ergonomic science.The current research mostly focused on the plantar pressure distribution, seatedpressure distribution and many other aspects.This paper makes introduction and analysis of this technology’s developmentamong the world. Most of the previous studies used the force measuring system of theforeign companies such as RSscan and Tekscan which are not only complicated butalso expensive. This paper envisages a simple and wieldy force measurement devicedesigned to do some replication experiments for two clinical applications:1.Thecomparison of the plantar pressure distribution between hallux valgus patients and thenormal ones;2.The different pressure operated by different doctors with the elasticbandage in pressure therapy. Through these two experiments the effect of this devicecan be verified.Based on this envision, a simple and wieldy pressure distribution measurementdevice is designed. Using FlexiForce pressure sensor of the Tekscan company thepressure signal can be got and via the64-ways analog switch circuit consist bytwo-stage analog switch chip CD4051the USB based A/D data acquisition cardMPS-010501can collect the pressure data and send it to the computer. The PCsoftware is programmed in VB language which can display, record, access and reviewthe data. Two kinds of pressure sensors of different measurement ranges are used toget the plantar pressure data and the pressure of the elastic bandage respectively.In the plantar pressure distribution experiment five metatarsophalangeal jointsare selected as the main force measurement points to measure the plantar pressuredistribution of20normal subjects and5patients with hallux valgus both pre-operationand post-operation. The result is the pressure of the second metatarsophalangeal jointis unusually high and the whole distribution is biased. This makes great importance inthe analysis and evaluation of the foot diseases. In the elastic bandage experiment,different doctors operate the3M elastic bandage with two or three layers. Accordingto the result of measurement, the tension of the elastic bandage operated by different doctors varies widely and the blindness during pressure therapy can be eliminated bythis device.