Development of customized knee brace for osteoarthritis

Abstract

Osteoarthritis (OA) is the one of the major concern among the people who all above 40 years of age. This OA is
considered as a chronic disorder which leads to the damage in the cartilage between femur and tibia and causes joint
disease. The OA patients are recommend to practice the knee brace for relieving pain. Three dimensional modeling and 3D
printing are the standard techniques were used [1] for the designing of knee brace. The measurements are taken from the
CT image of OA patients through Materialize Interactive Medical Image Control System (MIMICS) software. The
proposed method of knee brace were designed by the Computer Aided Design (CAD). Polylactic acid (PLA) is the
material which is used for 3D printing. The customized knee brace is considered as comfort fit to the OA patients. The
main aim of the study is to design a 3D modeling knee brace and to measure the force for OA patient in the patellofemoral
region using FSR sensor (Force Sensitive Resistor). The patients were fitted with the knee brace and the FSR sensors also
attached with the knee brace in the patellofemoral region and made the patients to practice the walking activity within 5
minutes and the forces were measured by using National Instrument Educational Laboratory Virtual Instrumentation Suite
(NI ELVIS) and Laboratory Virtual Instrument Engineering Workbench (LABVIEW) software.