scholarly journals Biomechanical Assessment of Reaching Movements in Post-Stroke Patients During a Robot-Aided Rehabilitation

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Mazzoleni ◽  
F. Posteraro ◽  
M. Filippi ◽  
F. Forte ◽  
S. Micera ◽  
...  

The main goal of this paper is to describe a method for the assessment of the motor performance in post-stroke subjects who have been undergone a robot-aided upper limb rehabilitation treatment. The motivation for adopting such methodology relies on the need of quantitative methods for the evaluation of the effects of robot-aided rehabilitation treatments, which assumes great importance from the clinical point of view. The method is based on the analysis of biomechanical parameters computed from force data recorded during the execution of planar reaching movements. Data from 17 chronic post-stroke patients and 5 healthy subjects were analysed. The results show the effectiveness of the proposed method, which can contribute to quantitatively evaluate the effects of a robot-mediated therapy on the upper limb of chronic post-stroke subjects.

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (02) ◽  
pp. 1650008 ◽  
Author(s):  
PIN-CHENG KUNG ◽  
CHOU-CHING K. LIN ◽  
SHU-MIN CHEN ◽  
MING-SHAUNG JU

Spastic hypertonia causes loss of range of motion (ROM) and contractures in patients with post-stroke hemiparesis. The pronation/supination of the forearm is an essential functional movement in daily activities. We developed a special module for a shoulder-elbow rehabilitation robot for the reduction and biomechanical assessment of pronator/supinator hypertonia of the forearm. The module consisted of a rotational drum driven by an AC servo motor and equipped with an encoder and a custom-made torque sensor. By properly switching the control algorithm between position control and torque control, a hybrid controller able to mimic a therapist’s manual stretching movements was designed. Nine stroke patients were recruited to validate the functions of the module. The results showed that the affected forearms had significant increases in the ROM after five cycles of stretching. Both the passive ROM and the average stiffness were highly correlated to the spasticity of the forearm flexor muscles as measured using the Modified Ashworth Scale (MAS). With the custom-made module and controller, this upper-limb rehabilitation robot may be able to aid physical therapists to reduce hypertonia and quantify biomechanical properties of the muscles for forearm rotation in stroke patients.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (8) ◽  
pp. 1620 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bai ◽  
Song ◽  
Li

In order to improve the convenience and practicability of home rehabilitation training for post-stroke patients, this paper presents a cloud-based upper limb rehabilitation system based on motion tracking. A 3-dimensional reachable workspace virtual game (3D-RWVG) was developed to achieve meaningful home rehabilitation training. Five movements were selected as the criteria for rehabilitation assessment. Analysis was undertaken of the upper limb performance parameters: relative surface area (RSA), mean velocity (MV), logarithm of dimensionless jerk (LJ) and logarithm of curvature (LC). A two-headed convolutional neural network (TCNN) model was established for the assessment. The experiment was carried out in the hospital. The results show that the RSA, MV, LC and LJ could reflect the upper limb motor function intuitively from the graphs. The accuracy of the TCNN models is 92.6%, 80%, 89.5%, 85.1% and 87.5%, respectively. A therapist could check patient training and assessment information through the cloud database and make a diagnosis. The system can realize home rehabilitation training and assessment without the supervision of a therapist, and has the potential to become an effective home rehabilitation system.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document