This chapter shall provide a brief introduction to the prostheses and their development in the current advance technological era. The prosthesis design, control, and architecture completely changed with the change in the amputation level. The transradial amputee stump design, electronics, battery, and circuit placement change significantly with the change of the residual arm of the amputee. This leads to designing the prostheses with the focus of the amputation level and ease of customization. Recent development in the 3D printing and open source prosthetic design leads the user to choose, modify, and print the prostheses with the required sets of functionalities. In this chapter, a brief introduction of the prostheses has been given, starting with the types of prostheses according to the level of amputation and functionality. Then, the state-of-the-art prostheses available commercially and under research will be introduced. Afterward, the 3D printed prostheses are discussed. This chapter will end with the comparison of the medical advancement over the average life of people in general and comparison of the same for countries with low and high per capita income.
Part of the book: Computer Architecture in Industrial, Biomechanical and Biomedical Engineering
This chapter will begin with the introduction to biomechanics and its relationship with the physiology and anatomy. Then it introduces the basic concepts of kinematics, kinetics, and anthropometry and discusses in detail the muscle mechanics and electromyography. The muscle is the actuator of the human body, especially the skeletal muscles which are attached with the skeleton play an important role in defining the movements of the human body. The human body controls the muscle through the nervous system, and this nervous system generates signals called electroencephalogram (EEG) which upon leaving the nerves excites the muscle and converted into muscle signals usually called electromyogram (EMG). In this chapter, we will discuss the mechanics of the muscle in conjunction with the EMG. EMG is the tool to study the activity of the muscles and hence the key to understand the mechanics of the human body.
Part of the book: Recent Advances in Biomechanics