A Medical Device for Patellofemoral Disorders: Design and Development

Patellofemoral disorders have been recognized as one of the major causes of the human knee articulation problems. In general, the current available methods to assess patellofemoral joint disorders include the analysis of clinical history, clinical tests and imaging exams. These approaches are ambiguous in the diagnosis produced since they strongly depend on the expertise of the examinant. With the purpose to assist in the diagnosis process of the patellofemoral disorders, a new medical device is proposed throughout this work. In the sequel of this process, the identification and full characterization of the main issues associated with patellofemoral joint are presented. The main features and the engineered solution are accuracy and reproducibility, possibility of incorporation into imaging equipment, adaptability to a large range of knee sizes, easy and cheap to manufacture and anatomically and ergonomically fashion. The mechanical system designed and built allows for the measurement and quantification of the most significant patellofemoral joint motions, more precisely the medial-lateral translation, internal-external tilt and internal-external rotation. The validation of the medical device is investigated here by analyzing the data produced from actual clinical exams, being the early results quite satisfactory and very promising for extensive use in helping in the diagnosis of the patellofemoral disorders.