Low cost real-time finger flexion strength measurement system

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title>
<jats:p>Human grip strength is important in carrying out daily activities. However, the grip strength may be decreases or affected due to aging or diseases. Thus, hand exercising ball is invented as a rehabilitation device in order improve the physical grip strength. The commercial hand exercising balls comes with different stiffness which are soft, medium and hard without quantitative data. In the rehabilitation, diagnosis and intervention should be done quickly and accurately. The data are crucial for therapist to evaluate and determine the suitable treatment for the patients. A low cost real-time finger flexion strength measurement system is developed to measure the forces required to squeeze the hand exercising balls with different stiffness. The prototype is able to measure the subjects’ grip strength from four fingers without the thumb. Data collected from 10 subjects (6 healthy subjects and 4 patients) with different gender, age, height, weight and health status. The force required to grip the hand exercising ball range from 7.71N to 79.11N for soft ball, 12.80N to 104.08N for medium ball and 19.35N to 165.82N for hard ball.</jats:p>