Wearable Smart Cervical Collar with Real-time Rehabilitation of Neck Posture Correction

With people rely heavily on electronic gadgets for entertainment and work and their exposure to unnatural positions can cause the joints, muscles, and vertebrae to be in stressful positions. Conscious or unconscious prolonged exposure to bad posture can cause fracture of the cervical spine and muscle imbalance leading to increased workload. Cervical flexion is a complex mechanism involving eight joints between the skull and C1 through the vertebrae of the cervical spine. Shortening of sternocleidomastoid, and scalene muscles which are responsible for rotation and tilting of the head are the major effects related to the wrong posture. According to the Rule of Thumb, for every degree of neck angle deviation, the load acting on the spine doubles. Thus, it is important to maintain an ideal cranial vertebral angle. A cervical collar is one of the existing remedies for correcting neck postures by supporting the head-trunk area by limiting the head movements. Adjustable CTO (Cervical Thoracic Orthosis) braces help in the rehabilitation of both the cervical and thoracic spine. But usage of such collars and braces can have negative impacts like muscle stiffening, loss of proprioception, and increase of aspirational risk and can only be used for treating the after-effects of wrong postures. This paper proposes the development of a 3 D printed wearable cervical collar with built-in MPU650 Accelerometers, Gyroscope, and sEMG electrodes under the control of a ESP8266 NodeMCU that provides real-time detection of posture deviation. The real-time haptic feedback is provided by built-in coin vibrators and screen alerts in a mobile app developed in Blynk App. Validation of the ergonomically designed collar is carried out by analyzing the muscle activity using BIOPAC MP45 among 17 age and sex-matched volunteers. The significant change in waveform length (WL) and integrated EMG (iEMG) have been found useful in implementing the alert system. The proposed idea applies to the users performing occupational activities, educational sectors, and in the current pandemic world where the use of technology and modern devices are excessive.