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Assessing the Validity and Reliability of A Low-Cost Microcontroller-Based Load Cell Amplifier for Measuring Lower Limb and Upper Limb Muscular Force

Lower and upper limb maximum muscular force development is an important indicator of physical capacity. Manual muscle testing, load cell coupled with a signal conditioner, and handheld dynamometry are three widely used techniques for measuring isometric muscle strength. Recently, there is a prolifer...

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Autores principales: Gaudet, Julie, Handrigan, Grant
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7506672/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32899264
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s20174999
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author Gaudet, Julie
Handrigan, Grant
author_facet Gaudet, Julie
Handrigan, Grant
author_sort Gaudet, Julie
collection PubMed
description Lower and upper limb maximum muscular force development is an important indicator of physical capacity. Manual muscle testing, load cell coupled with a signal conditioner, and handheld dynamometry are three widely used techniques for measuring isometric muscle strength. Recently, there is a proliferation of low-cost tools that have potential to be used to measure muscle strength. This study examined both the criterion validity, inter-day reliability and intra-day reliability of a microcontroller-based load cell amplifier for quantifying muscle strength. To do so, a low-cost microcontroller-based load cell amplifier for measuring lower and upper limb maximal voluntary isometric muscular force was compared to a commercial grade signal conditioner and to a handheld dynamometer. The results showed that the microcontroller-based load cell amplifier correlated nearly perfectly (Pearson's R-values between 0.947 to 0.992) with the commercial signal conditioner and the handheld dynamometer, and showed good to excellent association when calculating ICC scores, with values of 0.9582 [95% C.I.: 0.9297–0.9752] for inter-day reliability and of 0.9269 [95% C.I.: 0.8909–0.9533] for session one, intra-day reliability. Such results may have implications for how the evaluation of muscle strength measurement is conducted in the future, particularly for offering a commercial-like grade quality, low cost, portable and flexible option.
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spelling pubmed-75066722020-09-26 Assessing the Validity and Reliability of A Low-Cost Microcontroller-Based Load Cell Amplifier for Measuring Lower Limb and Upper Limb Muscular Force Gaudet, Julie Handrigan, Grant Sensors (Basel) Article Lower and upper limb maximum muscular force development is an important indicator of physical capacity. Manual muscle testing, load cell coupled with a signal conditioner, and handheld dynamometry are three widely used techniques for measuring isometric muscle strength. Recently, there is a proliferation of low-cost tools that have potential to be used to measure muscle strength. This study examined both the criterion validity, inter-day reliability and intra-day reliability of a microcontroller-based load cell amplifier for quantifying muscle strength. To do so, a low-cost microcontroller-based load cell amplifier for measuring lower and upper limb maximal voluntary isometric muscular force was compared to a commercial grade signal conditioner and to a handheld dynamometer. The results showed that the microcontroller-based load cell amplifier correlated nearly perfectly (Pearson's R-values between 0.947 to 0.992) with the commercial signal conditioner and the handheld dynamometer, and showed good to excellent association when calculating ICC scores, with values of 0.9582 [95% C.I.: 0.9297–0.9752] for inter-day reliability and of 0.9269 [95% C.I.: 0.8909–0.9533] for session one, intra-day reliability. Such results may have implications for how the evaluation of muscle strength measurement is conducted in the future, particularly for offering a commercial-like grade quality, low cost, portable and flexible option. MDPI 2020-09-03 /pmc/articles/PMC7506672/ /pubmed/32899264 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s20174999 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Gaudet, Julie
Handrigan, Grant
Assessing the Validity and Reliability of A Low-Cost Microcontroller-Based Load Cell Amplifier for Measuring Lower Limb and Upper Limb Muscular Force
title Assessing the Validity and Reliability of A Low-Cost Microcontroller-Based Load Cell Amplifier for Measuring Lower Limb and Upper Limb Muscular Force
title_full Assessing the Validity and Reliability of A Low-Cost Microcontroller-Based Load Cell Amplifier for Measuring Lower Limb and Upper Limb Muscular Force
title_fullStr Assessing the Validity and Reliability of A Low-Cost Microcontroller-Based Load Cell Amplifier for Measuring Lower Limb and Upper Limb Muscular Force
title_full_unstemmed Assessing the Validity and Reliability of A Low-Cost Microcontroller-Based Load Cell Amplifier for Measuring Lower Limb and Upper Limb Muscular Force
title_short Assessing the Validity and Reliability of A Low-Cost Microcontroller-Based Load Cell Amplifier for Measuring Lower Limb and Upper Limb Muscular Force
title_sort assessing the validity and reliability of a low-cost microcontroller-based load cell amplifier for measuring lower limb and upper limb muscular force
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7506672/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32899264
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s20174999
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