Jay Kim (Doctoral Student)
Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences
E-mail: jhkim01@uw...

TITLE:

"Non-Invasive Real-time Assessment of Muscle Fatigue During Computer Use"


ABSTRACT:

Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) account for a large proportion of occupational injuries.
As the computer has become more ubiquitous in office work environments, so have
computer-related MSDs.  Since most work-related MSDs develop from the accumulation
of micro trauma over moderate to long periods of time, early detection of physiological
degradation, i.e. muscle fatigue, may help reduce the occurrence of MSDs.  There are
several laboratory-based assessment tools to measure muscle fatigue; however, due to
their invasiveness, lack of portability and cost, these measurement tools may not be
appropriate for measuring computer-related muscle fatigue in field-based or occupational
settings.  A dearth of appropriate assessment tools has made it difficult to establish
rigorous exposure-response relationships.  In this talk, I will present a new potential
non-invasive assessment tool to quantify muscle fatigue by using digital signals from
computer input devices.