Joshua Rolison

A hand-held diagnostic tool for stress fracture detection

Osto is a portable, handheld tool that can identify a suspected stress fracture within athletes who are at an elevated risk.

• Stress fractures represent 10-20% of all injuries in sports medicine
• 21% of stress fractures are season ending injuries and 22% of them are recurrent injuries.
• If stress fractures are left untreated, it can lead to complete bone failure and non-union of fracture healing.

The process of diagnosis is time-consuming, often requires many diagnosis attempts and appointments with medical staff. Misdiagnosis can also take place. There are existing methods that are used to diagnose stress fractures. However, due to problems including; lack of availability, unreliability and inducing an ionising radiation dose, the process of diagnosis is often frustrating for the injured. The device aims to empower at-risk athletes in improving the speed and cost of the diagnosis of a stress fracture.

The rechargeable device, designed for personal and shared use, inspired by emerging research uses a compact narrowband monopole antenna to detect small fractures in bones. The antenna is low cost, non-invasive, and produces no ionising radiation.

Users are guided though the scanning process with the help of a pulsing LED ring, haptic feedback and in-app instructions.

Through comparing the scanned result to a healthy scan, presence and length of fractures can be identified.

This week long project aimed to provide help to remote workers who suffer with and are at risk of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). The proposal uses a combination of short burst, intense light therapy and a circadian rhythm mimicking ‘sun’ light that rises and falls as the time progresses.