Sports medicine advancements are continuously evolving allowing professionals to utilize tools to provide for their athletes’ care. These tools have allowed clinicians to better diagnose and determine the extent of an athlete’s injury. Over the last 20 years, an emphasis has been placed on mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBI) and/or concussions. This focus on mTBI and concussions has led to an understanding of the mechanism of injury (MOI), development of grading/severity scales of injury, and diagnostic tools for properly assessing an athlete suffering from an injury to the brain. Clinicians understanding of concussion has excelled in recent years, but with advancement in technologies and diagnostic tools, all professionals need to understand the importance of incorporating tools into the diagnostic procedure. Thus, the purpose of this review is to evaluate common tools in practice, as well as newer tools, that could be utilized by sports medicine professionals.
Loss of mobility and independence directly affects the quality of life of many vulnerable individuals. In order to address this, researchers have been developing wearable walking assist exoskeletons to aid users with their daily activities. While this technology has advanced tremendously in the past decade, current exoskeletons are yet to be ergonomic, causing discomfort and injuries to the user, leading to early device rejection. This research intends to assess the kinematic and kinetic compatibility of a novel knee joint suitable for exoskeletons. The proposed knee design can be adapted to accommodate a kinematic offset and optimize force delivery. This is achieved by ensuring that the mechanical and biological joint rotation axes are aligned and that the moment arm can be varied to mimic the mechanical characteristics of a biological knee. Model simulations and mechanical testing of fabricated prototypes were achieved to analyze and validate the design. Results confirmed the compatibility of the design, which demonstrated kinematic absolute error values of 1.68 and 0.32 mm for the offset and aligned joints, respectively. It was shown that the moment arm can be varied throughout flexion, allowing future iterations to achieve optimal and effective moment transfer.
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