Development of Smart Socks To Prevent Diabetic Foot Ulcers

Diabetic patients suffer from reduced sensation in their foot which will be leading to foot ulcers that are hard to treat, and often resulting in limb amputation. The existing health-care techniques usually fail to prevent foot ulcers because they cannot monitor the foot in real-time. In this work, we seek to develop smart socks based on textile technology to help patients to artificially feel sensory stimuli that they cannot realistically feel. In collaboration with Myant Inc, a leading company in advanced manufacturing of textile technology, this project proposes an innovative way to sense the forces at points across the foot and electrically stimulating the still-functioning nerve near the ankle once the forces exceed a âsmartâ threshold (painful stimuli). In short, we seek to create a simple closed-loop neural prosthesis for diabetic patients to reduce the incidence of foot ulcers. TO BE CONT’D

Faculty Supervisor:

Steven Prescott

Student:

Milad Lankarany

Partner:

Myant Inc

Discipline:

Engineering - biomedical

Sector:

Life sciences

University:

Program: