Hand motion analysis during robot-aided rehabilitation in chronic stroke

A high percentage of post-stroke patients reports spasticity and no functional use of the upper limb. To adapt the therapy in the most patient-specific manner, it is of paramount importance to objectively assess motor improvement during rehabilitation therapy. In this paper, a quantitative evaluation of the results obtained by using a commercial exoskeletal glove for hand rehabilitation (i.e. Gloreha Sinfonia®) is performed. A camera-based calibration procedure for the bending sensors embedded in the Gloreha Sinfonia robotic glove for hand rehabilitation is introduced to retrieve the range of motion (i.e. the flexion angle excursion of the finger metacarpophalangeal joints) of the patients' hand. Once calibrated, the sensors embedded in the glove have been used to objectively assess the motor performance of chronic post-stroke patients that underwent a robotic treatment with the Gloreha Sinfonia glove. The preliminary results obtained on ten post-stroke patients demonstrated i) that the camera-based procedure permits to retrieve joints' angular values from bending sensors embedded in the glove ii) an improvement in motor performance.