Shoulder rehabilitation with biofeedback simulation

More than 62,000 Australians were suffered from Traumatic Brain Injury, Spinal Cord Injury and stroke in 2011. The results of such injuries lead to physical disabilities that yield to prohibiting from performing a person´s daily life activities and reduce the quality of life. Moreover, the cost of such affects is almost AUD 13 billion per annum in health care sector. To overcome such situation, rehabilitation is essential for recovery to return to normal life. This paper presents the development of an effective shoulder rehabilitation system with motivational approach. Our development aims to reduce the one-to-one patient-therapist treatment relation contact, make it less regular consultation, and reduce high health care cost. The system is made up of two modules: rehabilitation exercises module where rehabilitation exercises are developed and real-time biofeedback simulation module that detect the active muscle in real time based on sEMG threshold which is predefined by therapist. Four rehabilitation exercises are developed and integrated with biofeedback system. The effectiveness of proposed system has been evaluated through testing with ten subjects and got high performance. The system has demonstrated in Port Kembla Rehabilitation Hospital.