Azadeh Kian and Mojtaba Gohari
The ability to balance properly is one the health parameters affected by multiple sclerosis disease. This may be momentary, or it may get more chronic with a continued inability to maintain balance. In this paper, we design a force plate hardware and software of three-dimensional force measurement instrument based on strain gauge technology to detect and calculate balance characteristics. We take the advantages of strain gauge sensors to measure the forces in three dimensions (x-axis, y-axis & z-axis) at 500Hz sampling rate and 6 grams accuracy. The software will read the data through a USB port and save them in an excel file for further assessments. Additionally, the software calculates the forces applied to the joints. Finally, the overall instrument is tested on several healthy subjects and their reports are altered elaborately. As far as the balance characteristics play an important role in diagnosing various types of diseases such as MS, Parkinson …, extracting changes in Centre of Pressure (COP) position is one of the main objects of this project. Totally, this system may be used in many purposes such as diagnosing the diseases involving balance disabilities, monitoring the rehabilitation procedure and training the patients to improve their standing posture stability.
