Towards Accessible & Affordable Home-Rehabilitation For Stroke Patients

Stroke patients face impaired motor and cognitive functions affecting quality of life. Early rehabilitation and clinical assessments can assist in recovery, with home-rehabilitation a convenient approach for the patient. But, it usually employs specialized setups and sensing hardware, impacting its adoptability, especially in low to medium income countries (LMICs). To address this, we present a framework for telerehab using off-the-shelf commercial devices providing novel analytics for motor assessment, and interactive gamified exercises. We present our approach of directly using 3-D swing trajectories of foot calculated from a single 6-axis motion sensor attached to shoe's sole hitherto possible only with more sophisticated sensing modalities, and using it to assess gait quality using a novel comparative spatial scoring approach. We also present Range of Motion (ROM) assessment which can be performed with a smartwatch or a strapped smartphone providing accurate angle and speed profile, while also catering to stray rotations owing to muscle weakness in stroke patients. An initial proof of concept is presented for both solutions using motion data from smartwatch and comparing spatial outputs with Kinect V2. We also introduce two games from our gaming suite which receive real-time motion input from limb-worn device, aimed at improving patient's motor and cognitive abilities, with customized scoring methodologies for personalized therapy and evaluating progress of recovery. In future, these games, along with our proposed novel analytics for gait and ROM, are planned for validation on stroke patients in clinical trials.Clinical relevance - Stroke is one of the top contributors of global DALY (Disability-Adjusted Life Years), with 90% contribution from LMICs. This is primarily due to lack of any rehabilitation received post-hospitalization owing to inaccessibility and cost of rehab and its aids, on top of cost incurred on clinical visits. With home-based rehabilitation using easily accessible devices providing rich analytics, not only can there be a reduction in the clinical burden, but also post-stroke care can become more adoptable, affordable and effective.