Synergies-based real-time monitoring to improve post-stroke rehabilitation
No approaches extensively explored how to avoid pathological movement reinforcement associated with electromyography-controlled rehabilitation in unilateral stroke patients with motor impairments of the upper limb.
This project will explore the problem focusing on the methodological development of a physiological measure to assess in a quantitative way the quality of the muscle patterns.
Specifically, it aims to define a physiological-evidence-based global index adaptable to the specific need of each patient and stable among rehabilitative training sessions to (a) quantitative assess the quality of the movement, i.e. of the muscular pattern, to ultimately identify pathological synergies and define the strategy to discourage them, (b) to detect and monitor their changes among consecutive rehabilitative training sessions.
The project will explore pathological synergies during simple rehabilitative exercises in stroke patients and how they change properties of the EMG signal, reflecting, therefore, alterations in upper limb muscle synergy structure caused by stroke.
The global index, which will be defined in the project, could be integrated into a tool (device) potentially usable by patients at home for evaluating by themselves the quality of movements. Promising results can be exploited in the designing of new effective and efficient treatments based on physiological information coming from the muscular pattern of each patient.