Basic Kneedz

Inspiration

As athletes who have overcome ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) injuries and other knee injuries, we have always been interested in the risk factors associated with ACL tears. Currently, most of the technology involving ACL tears revolves around recovery methods. As 70% of ACL tears occur from non-contact injuries, we felt the need to delve into the uncharted area of investigating preventative measures. Our goal was to take a step towards preventative medicine, in order to format a guide for athletes to prevent ACL injuries from occurring in the first place.

What it does

Basic Kneedz takes into account various quantitative factors, such as Q-Angle and knee to hip ratio while jumping, in addition to qualitative factors that analyze history and activity levels. Taking all of this information into account, the app provides athletes with an ACL tear susceptibility score in regards to factors that they can control as well as another susceptibility score in regards to factors that are out of their control. Using this information, athletes can alter their training regimen with the help of trainers while also accepting their susceptibility based on biological components that are out of their hands. Our goal is to overcome the ACL epidemic in order to improve the safety of athletes.

How we built it

Consulting various research on ACL injury risk factors, we highlighted the crucial factors that could be obtained through simple imaging analysis and survey questions. Our app will record and analyze these factors, thus providing the user with instant risk assessment. We used Android studio to build our app.

The app allows the user to take instant pictures of the athlete and pinpoint the position of his/her hips and knees.
The pinpointing positions will be processed to give out the Q-Angle result and Knee/Hip ratio.
The user then answers a set of questions regarding the athlete's training habit, his/her injury experience, family injury background, gender, and more
The data and answers are analyzed, calculated and converted to a score scaled 1 to 5.
All the factors are divided into two groups: controllable factors and uncontrollable factors, whose importances are weighted.
The final result will provide the user with a risk assessment and information analysis.

Challenges we ran into

Evaluating the input data to create an optimal computation based on our resources.
Assessing the importance of each factor contributing to ACL tear injury.
Designing an Android app with little prior programming experience.
Including user-friendly features into the application design.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

-Taking an issue that has personally affected us and designing an app that will aid athletes in the future in regards to ACL injury prevention -Utilizing our passion for sports and medicine in order to develop an innovative idea that will benefit both fields -Stepping out of our comfort zone and learning how to code -Working together as a team

What we learned

-We learned how to use Android Studio -We learned a lot about the risk factors associated with ACL tears

What's next for Basic Kneedz

The next step would be to further research the risk factors associated with ACL tears in order to develop a more accurate risk assessment. We also want to look into more quantitative risk factors in order to more accurately quantify risk assessment.