A team from Cardiff University’s School of Engineering is hoping to create a smart patch to detect the early onset of osteoarthritis (OA) in the knees. It is currently exploring the use of damage sensors from aircraft wings to catch subsonic cracking sounds in joints before the disease fully develops.
A smart patch could help save millions of pounds spent on diagnosis via X-ray and MRI scans. When human joints develop OA, they can make audible clicking noises during movement due to damage, otherwise known as crepitus. In the early stages of the disease, these rubbing noises are confined to higher, non-audible frequencies and so the researchers are looking at ways to capture these noises.
