Standing balance therapy through portable and low-cost visual feedback training

Individuals with incomplete spinal cord injury (iSCI) often fall due to decreased sensorimotor integration. Functional electrical stimulation (FES) therapy combined with visual feedback balance training (VFBT), termed FES+VFBT, can effectively improve standing balance in iSCI populations. Although promising, the need for force plates (FP), which are expensive and bulky, limits the translation of these methods to clinical and home settings. In this work, we propose a solution by replacing FP with Wii Balance Board (WBB), allowing for more accessible FES+VFBT at a lower cost in both clinical and community settings. Our investigations on ten non-injured participants reveal that WBB-based estimated center of mass (COM) has low prediction error and high correlation in both anteroposterior (RMSE: 4.13 ± 0.69 mm, r: 0.94 ± 0.02) and mediolateral directions (RMSE: 6.25 ± 1.80 mm, r: 0.92 ± 0.04) with ground FP-estimated COM, resulting in similar stimulation patterns obtained with the WBB-based approach, indicating that the WBB-based FES+VFBT system could yield a more accessible therapeutic strategy for balance rehabilitation in iSCI.