Home-Based Rehabilitation System for Stroke Survivors: A Clinical Evaluation

Recently, a home-based rehabilitation system for stroke survivors (Baptista et al. Comput. Meth. Prog. Biomed. 176:111-120 2019), composed of two linked applications (one for the therapist and another one for the patient), has been introduced. The proposed system has been previously tested on healthy subjects. However, for a fair evaluation, it is necessary to carry out a clinical study considering stroke survivors. This work aims at evaluating the home-based rehabilitation system on 10 chronic post-stroke spastic patients. For this purpose, each patient carries out two exercises implying the motion of the spastic upper limb using the home-based rehabilitation system. The impact of the color-based 3D skeletal feedback, guiding the patients during the training, is studied. The Time Variable Replacement (TVR)-based average distance, as well as the average postural angle used in Baptista et al. (Comput. Meth. Prog. Biomed. 176:111-120 2019), are reported to compare the movement and the posture of the patient with and without showing the feedback proposals, respectively. Furthermore, three different questionnaires, specifically designed for this study, are used to evaluate the user experience of the therapist and the patients. Overall, the reported results suggest the relevance of the proposed system for home-based rehabilitation of stroke survivors.