Determination of the acceptable MPEG-4 quality for clinical real-time tele-echocardiography services.

Unlabelled: The characteristics of Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG-4) video compression, in particular its adaptability to narrowband channels and the elevated degree of compression obtainable, make it of interest for services of telemedicine that require instantaneous video transmission and interpretation. In this study we faced the problem of the minimum quality of service (QoS) in specific applications of tele-echocardiography (T-E). In the specifics we evaluated the clinical adequacy of MPEG-4 compression in the real time transmission of echocardiographic studies.

Measuring changes of movement dynamics during robot-aided neurorehabilitation of stroke patients.

The aim of this study was to describe in detail a new method, called normalized force control parameter (nFCP), to measure changes in movement dynamics obtained during robot-aided neurorehabilitation, and to evaluate its ability to estimate the clinical scales. The study was conducted in a group of 18 subjects after chronic stroke who underwent robot therapy of the upper limb. We used two different measures of movement dynamics to assess patients' performance during each session of training: the nFCP and force directional error (FDE), both measuring the directional error of the patient-exerted force applied to the end-effector of the robot device.

Assessing mechanisms of recovery during robot-aided neurorehabilitation of the upper limb.

Objective: The present study aimed to qualify and quantify the different components of motor recovery in a group of stroke patients treated by robot-aided techniques. In addition, the learning model of each motor recovery component was analyzed.

Methods: Two groups of poststroke patients were treated with the use of an elbow-shoulder manipulator, respectively, within (recent) and after (chronic) the first 6 months of their cerebrovascular accident.