Novel FMRI-Compatible wrist robotic device for brain activation assessment during rehabilitation exercise

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) can be applied to study the effects of rehabilitation strategies for neuroscience research. An MRI-wrist robot is designed and used as a clinical tool to examine the process of the brain plasticity changes. In this robot, the patient actuation is accomplished with two standard air cylinders, located inside the MRI chamber with two degrees of freedom (flexion-extension and ulna-radial deviation) with pneumatic air transmission, consisting of simple mechanism converting rotary motion to linear independently. A pilot study of brain image aiming at revealing more effective therapeutic strategies carried out to confirm the technical aspects of the development and validation. In a healthy subject, both wrist movement of robot and subject demonstrated brain activity in the contralateral primary somatosensory cortex. Because the robot does not move during the patient's body, a stand was designed to allow the wrist robot and patient to fit comfortably within the MRI machine. While all the parts of the robot were carefully selected with strict MRI compatibility requirements, the robot was tested by presenting some pilot imaging data with null effects on the image quality, as well. Finally, the possible further development of the robot has been introduced for a rehabilitation assessment.