Heel Raise Measurement Device for Plantarflexion Physiotherapy

In a typical heel raise exercise for patients undergoing rehabilitation, the physiotherapist often determines how much the feet have raised through visual inspection. For older patients, the balance training starts from forward/backward sway control of the ankle.

Our Community Partner
Kwong Wai Shiu Hospital

Our Faculty Members
Associate Professor Alfred Tan, Engineering Cluster
Associate Professor Indriyati Atmosukarto, Associate Professor Jeannie Lee, Assistant Professor Goh Weihan, Infocomm Technology Cluster

Challenges

  • Patients perform heel raise exercises to strengthen muscles around the ankles, with the physiotherapist making a visual estimate of the extent of the patient’s heel raise.
  • Errors may occur due to inaccurate estimations, thus leading to less effective rehabilitative exercises.

Key Innovation

  • Design a contactless heel raise device to sense, measure, record, analyse, display, and provide feedback to heel raise exercising users.

Impact

  • Alleviate workload of physiotherapists.
  • Provide more accurate analysis of the exercise outcomes. As patients perform heel raise exercises, the device can track and record data, allowing a therapist to better understand the patients’ progress.
  • Potential development of mobile applications, interactive interfaces, and algorithms to allow user feedback on the heel raise measurement device.