Abstract
Patients with fecal incontinence suffer both physically and psychosocially. Puborectalis helps with continence, and dysfunction of this muscle may cause fecal incontinence. Though some medical treatments have been introduced, little work has been done on functional assist device to puborectalis. This paper presents a design of a functional assist device to human puborectalis with Ti-Ni shape memory alloy as the actuating part, and evaluates its deformation and mechanical properties. The effectiveness of this device was confirmed by preliminary experiments conducted at body temperature.
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