Christopher Nichols

BioE Ph.D. Proposal 

February 2nd, 2024 

2:00 PM 

Location: Room 509, Tech Square Research Building (TSRB) at Georgia Tech 

Zoom Link:
https://gatech.zoom.us/j/92851742897

Committee: 

Omer T. Inan, PhD (Advisor, Georgia Institute of Technology: ECE, BioE)

Greg Sawicki, PhD (Georgia Institute of Technology: ME, BioE)

David Ewart, MD (Minneapolis Veteran’s Affairs Medical Center)

Minoru Shinohara, PhD (Georgia Institute of Technology: APPH, BioE)

Josiah Hester, PhD (Georgia Institute of Technology: CS) 

Advancing Wearable Musculoskeletal Health Monitoring in Mid-Activity and Everyday Environments

Existing methods of evaluating joint health have limited sensitivity and accessibility, preventing early detection and regular monitoring of musculoskeletal injury and disease until irreparable damage is done. Non-invasive sensing modalities such as knee acoustic emissions (KAEs) and localized electrical bioimpedance (EBI) show potential for providing a fuller picture of knee health, but these modalities have largely been contained to lab and clinical environments where their potential upside for regular at-home monitoring cannot be realized. Advancements must be made in both KAE and EBI sensing technology to capture information of earlier stages of musculoskeletal disease in at-home environments. First, these modalities must be shown as sensitive to early signs of musculoskeletal injury and disease. Further, the behavior of these signals and the information they carry must be interpretable during practical movements. Finally, the hardware and algorithms used for assessing musculoskeletal health must be optimized for the unpredictable environments encountered during everyday use. Successful completion of the proposed work will demonstrate joint health monitoring translating beyond laboratory settings where wearable technologies can be fully realized, and will represent a crucial step towards more frequent, accurate, and objective musculoskeletal health monitoring.