A mobile solution to ankle range of motion (ROM) measurement using image processing techniques

According to the literature, the estimated number of people with and without foot pain varies between 17 percent and 30 percent. Looking at this data, it can be easily said that there is a very large population in society suffering from foot pain. Therefore, due to its high proliferation, foot pain is considered a major factor reducing the quality of life for many. Considering the above, this thesis proposes a prototype system to help people with reduced mobility, due to foot pain, or because they are living in a rural area, to submit their current feet condition and seek a doctor's and/or physiotherapist's consultation. Accordingly, the developed system is designed as a mobile e-health application so that users can register/login, add their health history, and regularly upload the latest status of their feet In addition, the developed system allows users to take videos of their ankles while bending their feet forward and backward (dorsiflexion and plantarflexion) and upload them to the system so that they can automatically calculate the range of motion. Consequently, the prototype is evaluated by 8 healthy and young participants. The measurements of the same participants is also performed by a physiotherapist with a goniometer. These two 16-measure datasets are first evaluated by looking at their intraclass correlation. Although there is no statistically significant correlation between them, these two data sets are analyzed with the Bland & Altman plot and found to be in agreement with fixed bias. This result shows that the developed system can be used instead of a goniometer with the improvements to be made. Usability tests are also conducted among the participants using the system. The effect of usability scores on the difference between measurements are examined and reported by linear regression analysis.