Development of a sensor device for measurement of forces in cranial remodeling orthoses

Deformational plagiocephaly (DP) is an asymmetric infant head deformation caused by intrauterine pressures, birth complications, or unbalanced head position during sleep. In the most severe cases, it is treated with a cranial remodeling orthosis (CRO). A CRO is a customized helmet designed to constrain the growth of the infant's head, aiming to achieve head symmetry. During treatment with CROs, some complications arise due to excessive pressure in some regions, causing discomfort, redness, and skin lesions, among others. These complications often lead to the premature interruption of treatment and subsequent poor results. The monitoring of the forces inside the CRO is currently performed by sliding a plastic ruler between the head and the orthosis and assessing the amount of drag. This procedure requires experienced professionals and is subjective since there are no quantitative evaluation methods. With this work, we propose and test a proof of concept for a dedicated measurement system, that can measure the force being exerted on the infant's head in specified regions. With this new device, we expect to establish in a future work a correlation between the opinion of experienced health professionals with the measured force values, aiming to quantify a range of reference force values used in the treatment with CROs that may have future therapeutic relevance.