FES gait restoration and balance control in spinal cord-injured patients

The status of gait restoration in spinal cord-injured patients by means of FES is reviewed and the main aspects are discussed. This introduction highlights the issues of balance control, stimulation sequence synthesis, and control of enhanced gait modes containing unbalancing. The use of statically unstable dynamic weight-transfer phases is important for enhanced gait modes. To show how this phase can be employed the mode of static balance currently used for FES-assisted four-point gait in paraplegic patients is discussed, and how this mode of gait can be converted to a semi-dynamic gait mode is described. The possibilities and consequences of such an approach are briefly discussed.