Towards an Open, Flexible, Wearable Ultrasound Probe for Musculoskeletal Monitoring

Abstract

Ultrasound (US) is a widely used tool to observe musculoskeletal features during movement. US signals provide information about the instantaneous length and activation of muscles, and these signals are used for new prosthetic control strategies, to increase the performance of Human-Machine interfaces, or to improve muscle force predictions. However, existing commercial systems and research platforms are bulky, non-wearable, not supporting high frame rates, or lack configurability. Our work presents an US prototype meeting all key requirements to measure muscle activity during motion: our platform is open (providing access to raw data), flexible (operating in different modalities and channel count), it features wireless connectivity (supporting high frame rates> 100 Hz) and supports low power consumption (<1W) for a longer battery lifetime.