Design of Pressure Sensing Circuit to Measure Pressure Distribution of Patient’s Foot

Abstract

Design of pressure sensing circuit and related parameters are discussed in this paper. A significant portion of the world’s population is plagued by diabetes. It can deteriorate the organs of the body at a very high rate leading to fatal conditions, one of them being foot ulcers. The ulceration can lead to a choice between amputation of infected limb/s and loss of life. Deterioration of nerves cause the protective sensation to decrease with time. This causes high tensions in certain areas of the skin of feet due to poor judgement of weight distribution which in-turn causes the tissues to thin off and be torn layer by layer, resulting in ulcers. While prevention is better than cure, those that already suffer from and those that are recovering from such an ordeal would benefit very much from a handy device that can sense pressure distribution since it would help guide the patient to correct his or her gait movements accordingly. It would also be useful in selection of footwear since footwear can also cause change in gait. The idea is to build a prototype component that can measure and display the foot pressure of key points of the foot during gait at an affordable cost to a majority of the Sri Lankan population.