Ricerc@Sapienza

Stroke is one of the leading causes of long-term disability and, resulting mainly in hemiparesis of the upper limb, impacts on the subjects' ability to carry out daily living activities. One of the most commonly functional outcome measures used in stroke population motor assessment is the Box and Block Test (BBT). Each subject is asked to move blocks from one to another side of a box. The number of blocks moved in one-minute defines the subject's performance. Despite its ease, speed of implementation and ability to evoke activities such as grasping and manipulation of objects, its outcome does not provide information about the subject's ability to produce either physiological movements or compensatory strategies.
Objectification of clinical and functional scales still remains a challenge in the field of the clinical assessment. In the last years the use of wearable systems equipped with kinematic and electromyographic (EMG) sensors gained significant interest in upper limb movement analysis. At the state of art, no instrumented measurements provide a detailed insight into the upper limb movement during the BBT.
This project aims at defining a physiology-evidence based global index to quantitative describe the movement during the BBT execution. To reach the aim, three tasks will be accomplished: 1) EMG and kinematic data collection during BBT from healthy subjects and stroke patients with motor impairment of the upper limb; 2) movement characterization based on the analysis of EMG and kinematic features in both whole task and individual task phases (reaching, manipulation with object, and transfer); 3) global index definition to quantitatively describe the movement pattern. The project will provide a better insight into the arm motor function during the BBT execution and strongly impact on the clinical assessment, since it will return more informative and quantitative assessment of patients' states and improvements during the process of regaining motor abilities.