Performance evaluation of the BioBall device for wrist rehabilitation in adults and young adults

Abstract

The BioBall device, developed for wrist function rehabilitation, allows the execution of movements with a greater level of control. A component was added to make it possible to read the range of motion of the patient’s wrist. Thus, this project came up intending to evaluate the performance and suitability of the BioBall device for wrist function rehabilitation. To this end, a technical evaluation was performed in order to verify the consistency and accuracy of BioBall. Technical tests consisted of amplitude readings taken by the device, either in automatic or manual mode, “Passive Exercise” and “Physical Exercise” respectively. From the results obtained in this analysis it was concluded that the BioBall device, besides functioning correctly, can collect the angular data with consistency and it is suitable to follow the evolution of a patient's rehabilitation. In order to evaluate whether the BioBall device performs reproducible and repeatable range of motion measurements, a test-retest was performed on healthy subjects (with the space of one week). The maximum amplitude of each wrist movement of the participants was measured. The results of the statistical analysis showed that, although there is some variation in the amplitudes obtained between the test and the retest, the device has good reliability in measuring the range of motion of the wrist.