Towards Accessible & Affordable Home-Rehabilitation For Stroke Patients

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Rehabilitation Science
• Digital Health

Background:

• Stroke significantly impairs motor and cognitive functions, reducing quality of life.
• Effective rehabilitation is crucial but often hindered by specialized equipment and costs, particularly in low to medium income countries (LMICs).
• Existing home-rehabilitation solutions often require expensive or specialized hardware, limiting accessibility.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop an accessible telerehabilitation framework using off-the-shelf devices for stroke patients.
• To introduce novel analytics for motor assessment, including gait quality and Range of Motion (ROM).
• To create interactive, gamified exercises for motor and cognitive rehabilitation.

Main Methods:

• Utilizing a single 6-axis motion sensor on a shoe sole to calculate 3-D foot swing trajectories for gait analysis.
• Employing smartwatches or smartphones for accurate ROM assessment, including angle and speed profiles.
• Developing gamified exercises that integrate real-time motion input from limb-worn devices.

Main Results:

• Demonstrated proof of concept for gait and ROM assessments using smartwatch data, with comparisons to Kinect V2.
• Introduced two gamified exercises designed to enhance motor and cognitive abilities.
• Proposed customized scoring for personalized therapy and progress evaluation.

Conclusions:

• The proposed framework offers a novel, affordable, and effective approach to telerehabilitation for stroke survivors.
• Utilizing commercial devices and advanced analytics can reduce clinical burden and improve post-stroke care adoption.
• Future clinical trials are planned to validate the efficacy of these novel analytics and games on stroke patients.