An Orthopedic Wearable Device For Treating Patients With Cervical Spine Injuries

The novelty of the collar (our product) is, this device enables the elderly people to create movement for the head while the collar is braced to the neck when the user is seated, standing and walking.

The developed device employs the conventional cervical collar as a frame around the neck and in addition to this a parallel structured servo based electric manipulators were arranged around the neck frame to support the neck motion.

The experimental data demonstrate that the collar can perform flexion, extension, and lateral bending for different test subjects.

To evaluate the performance of this device, experimental trials were conducted on test subjects to find out the angular tilt of the head with the device worn using the CROM.

In addition, a neck surface muscle strain study is also conducted using strain sensors and the strain on the neck surface muscle is measured using NI-9236 strain DAQ.

It was found that by using the proposed assistive device, test subjects were able to mimic of human head/neck movements and achieved 45% in flexion, 58% in extension, 63% in lateral bending.

Further the strain generated on surface neck muscle is within the range of 40 x 10-6 to 80 x 10-6.