Ankle biomechanics testing device

Abstract

Ankle biomechanics is one branch of medicine, more precisely of orthopaedics that is growing in the recent years. Ankle injuries due to ankle lateral ligament damage are causing Chronic Ankle Instability in more patients every year, this issue affect them in his daily life reducing their mobility. In addition, there are still different therapies that can be researched and tried in order to find a more appropriate treatment. This Bachelor’s Thesis wants to understand how ankle biomechanics works to be able to facilitate a useful instrument to do research in this sector in order to understand better how the ligaments forming this joint work and which are the possible treatments to heal these injuries. The methodology followed during the study has been divided in different parts. First of all, a thorough biographic research has been done in order to understand in which point is nowadays ankle’s biomechanics investigation. Afterwards, once it is known the state of technology of the sector, the development of hardware and software for the improvement of the prototype has been done. The final result, is the minimum functional device available now, with a new hardware and software composition. By taking as initial point the device created by Dr. Jan Martínez, the cuboid scaffold has been used, then Arduino Uno board and software has been installed in order to control the electric motors. However, this is only an initial study further investigations have to be done in order to have the final functional device. It will be needed to do a complete clinical trial in order to verify its functionality to obtain the CE validation for selling the medical device.