Feasibility study on fiber-optic goniometer for measuring knee joint angle

In this study, we fabricated a fiber-optic goniometer using a plastic optical fiber, a light-emitting diode, and a photodiode. The cladding of the plastic optical fiber was removed at 0.5–3mm intervals regularly to increase the bending loss of the plastic optical fiber. Also, the output voltages of the photodiode based on light intensity that measured using the fiber-optic goniometer were measured light intensities using the fiber-optic goniometer were measured to evaluate the linearity of the fiber-optic goniometer. Finally, we measured the responses of the fiber-optic goniometer for gait speeds of 3, 5, and 10 km/h using a data acquisition board and a LabVIEW program.