Frozen Shoulder Rehabilitation: Exercise Simulation and Usability Study

Abstract

Frozen shoulder treatment is normally a time-consuming process. Continual physical therapy is required in practice for a patient to gradually recover over time. With the advent of mobile technology, there is an increasing number of smartphone applications being developed to facilitate patients to perform telerehabilitation. In this study, we incorporate animation to simulate arm movement in various exercise types via a mobile app to augment the use of biofeedback data for the treatment process. The main contribution of this paper is to simulate the frozen shoulder exercise using a Unity 3D model. Patients can do rehabilitation exercises at home by putting their smartphone on the shoulder using an armband and the data will be sent to the physiotherapist without the need to wait in long queue at the clinic to see the practitioner. The results indicated that our mobile app and web dashboard is useful for physiotherapists to easily monitor as well as manage a patient's rehabilitation process remotely.