A Novel Method to Estimate the Full Knee Joint Kinematics Using Low Cost IMU Sensors for Easy to Implement Low Cost Diagnostics

Traditional motion capture systems are the current standard in the assessment of knee joint kinematics. These systems are, however, very costly, complex to handle, and, in some conditions, fail to estimate the varus/valgus and internal/external rotation accurately due to the camera setup. This paper presents a novel and comprehensive method to infer the full relative motion of the knee joint, including the flexion/extension, varus/valgus, and internal/external rotation, using only low cost inertial measurement units (IMU) connected to the upper and lower leg. Furthermore, sensors can be placed arbitrarily and only require a short calibration, making it an easy-to-use and portable clinical analysis tool. The presented method yields both adequate results and displays the uncertainty band on those results to the user. The proposed method is based on an fixed interval smoother relying on a simple dynamic model of the legs and judicially chosen constraints to estimate the rigid body motion of the leg segments in a world reference frame. In this pilot study, benchmarking of the method on a calibrated robotic manipulator, serving as leg analogue, and comparison with camera-based techniques confirm the method’s accurateness as an easy-to-implement, low-cost clinical tool.