Motor Function Assessment of Upper Limb in Stroke Patients

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Rehabilitation Science
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Quantitative motor function assessment is crucial for personalized post-stroke treatment.
• Upper limb motor impairment significantly impacts stroke survivors' quality of life.
• Accurate evaluation methods are needed to guide rehabilitation efforts.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose and validate a novel quantitative evaluation method for upper limb motor function in stroke patients.
• To identify key biomechanical and muscle synergy features indicative of motor function levels.
• To establish the correlation between proposed features and a clinical assessment scale.

Main Methods:

• Recruited 34 stroke survivors and 25 healthy controls.
• Collected upper limb inertial sensor and surface electromyography (sEMG) data during reaching tasks.
• Extracted five features: shoulder angle, movement speeds, torso balance, and muscle synergy similarity.

Main Results:

• All five features showed statistically significant differences across severe, mild-to-moderate, and control groups (p ≤ 0.001).
• Features strongly correlated with the Fugl-Meyer assessment scale (p ≤ 0.001), indicating functional relevance.
• Bland-Altman analysis confirmed high consistency between the proposed feature-based evaluation and the Fugl-Meyer scale.

Conclusions:

• The five proposed features provide a reliable quantitative assessment of upper limb motor function in stroke patients.
• This method offers valuable insights for developing personalized and effective stroke rehabilitation strategies.
• The findings support the integration of sensor-based biomechanical analysis into clinical practice.