Wearable technology for spine movement assessment: A systematic review

Continuous monitoring of spine movement function could enhance our understanding of low back pain development. Wearable technologies have gained popularity as promising alternative to laboratory systems in allowing ambulatory movement analysis. This paper aims to review the state of art of current use of wearable technology to assess spine kinematics and kinetics. Four electronic databases and reference lists of relevant articles were searched to find studies employing wearable technologies to assess the spine in adults performing dynamic movements. Two reviewers independently identified relevant papers. Customised data extraction and quality appraisal form were developed to extrapolate key details and identify risk of biases of each study. Twenty-two articles were retrieved that met the inclusion criteria: 12 were deemed of medium quality (score 33.4-66.7%), and 10 of high quality (score >66.8%). The majority of articles (19/22) reported validation type studies. Only 6 reported data collection in real-life environments. Multiple sensors type were used: electrogoniometers (3/22), strain gauges based sensors (3/22), textile piezoresistive sensor (1/22) and accelerometers often used with gyroscopes and magnetometers (15/22). Two sensors units were mainly used and placing was commonly reported on the spine lumbar and sacral regions. The sensors were often wired to data transmitter/logger resulting in cumbersome systems. Outcomes were mostly reported relative to the lumbar segment and in the sagittal plane, including angles, range of motion, angular velocity, joint moments and forces. This review demonstrates the applicability of wearable technology to assess the spine, although this technique is still at an early stage of development.