High-Precision Wearable Displacement Sensing System for Clinical Diagnosis of Anterior Cruciate Ligament Tears

An anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tear is a common musculoskeletal injury with a high incidence. Traditional diagnosis employs magnetic response imaging (MRI), physical testing, or other clinical examination, which relies on complex and expensive medical instruments, or individual doctoral experience. Herein, we propose a wearable displacement sensing system based on a grating-structured triboelectric stretch sensor to diagnose the ACL injuries. The stretch sensor exhibits a high resolution (0.2 mm) and outstanding robustness (over 1,000,000 continuous operation cycles). This system is employed in clinical trial to diagnose ACL injuries. It measures the displacement difference between the affected leg and the healthy leg during Lachman test. And when such a difference is greater than 3 mm, the ACL is considered to be at risk for injury or tear. Compared with the gold standard of arthroscopy, the consistency rate of this wearable diagnostic system reached about 85.7%, which is higher than that of the Kneelax3 arthrometer (78.6%) with a large volume. This shows that the wearable system possesses the feasibility to supplement and improve existing arthrometers for facile diagnosing ACL injuries. It may take a promising step for wearable healthcare.