Rehabilitation Technologies by Integrating Exoskeletons, Aquatic Therapy, and Quantum Computing for Enhanced Patient Outcomes.

Recent advancements in patient rehabilitation integrate both traditional and modern techniques to enhance treatment efficacy and accessibility. Hydrotherapy, leveraging water's physical properties, is crucial for reducing joint stress, alleviating pain, and improving circulation. The rehabilitation of upper limbs benefits from technologies like virtual reality and robotics which, when combined with hydrotherapy, can accelerate recovery.

A genetic algorithm-based method to modulate the difficulty of serious games along consecutive robot-assisted therapy sessions.

Background And Objective: One of the biggest challenges during neurorehabilitation therapies is finding an appropriate level of therapy intensity for each patient to ensure the recovery of movement of the affected limbs while maintaining motivation. Different studies have proposed adapting the difficulty of exercises based on psychophysiological state, based on success rate, or by modeling the user's skills. However, all studies propose solutions for a single session, requiring a calibration process before using it in each session.

Estimating vertical ground reaction forces during gait from lower limb kinematics and vertical acceleration using wearable inertial sensors.

One of the most important forces generated during gait is the vertical ground reaction force (vGRF). This force can be measured using force plates, but these can limit the scope of gait analysis. This paper presents a method to estimate the vGRF using inertial measurement units (IMU) and machine learning techniques.

Hybrid brain/neural interface and autonomous vision-guided whole-arm exoskeleton control to perform activities of daily living (ADLs).

Background: The aging of the population and the progressive increase of life expectancy in developed countries is leading to a high incidence of age-related cerebrovascular diseases, which affect people's motor and cognitive capabilities and might result in the loss of arm and hand functions. Such conditions have a detrimental impact on people's quality of life. Assistive robots have been developed to help people with motor or cognitive disabilities to perform activities of daily living (ADLs) independently.

Patients' physiological reactions to competitive rehabilitation therapies assisted by robotic devices.

Background: The aging of the population and the progressive increase in life expectancy in developed countries is leading to a high incidence of cerebrovascular diseases. Several studies have demonstrated that robot-assisted rehabilitation therapies combined with serious games can improve rehabilitation outcomes. Social interaction in the form of multiplayer games has been highlighted as a potential element to increase patient's motivation and exercise intensity, which professionals have described as one of the determining factors in maximizing rehabilitation outcomes.

Development of a single actuator exoskeleton for wrist and forearm rehabilitation.

Recent estimations state that the absolute number of strokes will increase in the future. For this reason, novel rehabilitation therapies, such as robot-assisted therapy, are essential to speed up patient recovery. This paper describes the design, development, and control aspects of a light-exoskeleton addressing forearm and wrist motions using one actuator.

Movement-Related EEG Oscillations of Contralesional Hemisphere Discloses Compensation Mechanisms of Severely Affected Motor Chronic Stroke Patients.

Conventional rehabilitation strategies for stroke survivors become difficult when voluntary movements are severely disturbed. Combining passive limb mobilization, robotic devices and EEG-based brain-computer interfaces (BCI) systems might improve treatment and clinical follow-up of these patients, but detailed knowledge of neurophysiological mechanisms involved in functional recovery, which might help for tailoring stroke treatment strategies, is lacking. Movement-related EEG changes (EEG event-related desynchronization (ERD) in [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] bands, an indicator of motor cortex activation traditionally used for BCI systems), were evaluated in a group of 23 paralyzed chronic stroke patients in two unilateral motor tasks alternating paretic and healthy hands ((i) passive movement, using a hand exoskeleton, and (ii) voluntary movement), and compared to nine healthy subjects.

Differences in Physiological Reactions Due to a Competitive Rehabilitation Game Modality.

Interpersonal rehabilitation games, compared to single-player games, enhance motivation and intensity level. Usually, it is complicated to restrict the use of the system to pairs of impaired patients who have a similar skill level. Thus, such games must be dynamically adapted.

Exploring New Potential Applications for Hand Exoskeletons: Power Grip to Assist Human Standing.

Hand exoskeleton potential applications reach further than grasping or assistance during manipulation. In this paper, we present a preliminary study of how this technology can be applied in order to improve performance during standing to help the user to keep balance under perturbations. Non-impaired users wearing a hand exoskeleton gripping a hand rail were pushed by a cable-driven robot, so that their standing equilibrium was perturbed.

Physiological reactions in single-player and competitive arm rehabilitation games.

This study aims to explore the relationship between the stress level and the exercise intensity performing a rehabilitation task, aided by an upper limb rehabilitation robot, in a game in single-player mode and competitive mode. The stress level has been estimated by means of the Galvanic Skin Response(GSR). The results prove that to employ a social game mode like the competitive one, makes possible to increase the intensity level increasing the stress level to a lesser extent than in single-player modes.

Electromyography Assessment of the Assistance Provided by an Upper-Limb Exoskeleton in Maintenance Tasks.

In this paper, the analysis of the intensity of muscle activations in different subjects when they perform an industrial task in a repetitive way assisted by a robotic upper-limb exoskeleton is presented. To do that, surface electromyography (EMG) signals were monitored with and without a robotic upper-limb exoskeleton for 10 subjects during a drilling task, a typical tedious maintenance or industrial task. Our results show that wearing the upper-limb exoskeleton substantially reduces muscle activity during a drilling task above head height.

User activity recognition system to improve the performance of environmental control interfaces: a pilot study with patients.

Background: Assistive technologies aim to increase quality of life, reduce dependence on care giver and on the long term care system. Several studies have demonstrated the effectiveness in the use of assistive technology for environment control and communication systems. The progress of brain-computer interfaces (BCI) research together with exoskeleton enable a person with motor impairment to interact with new elements in the environment.

Synchronization of Slow Cortical Rhythms During Motor Imagery-Based Brain-Machine Interface Control.

Modulation of sensorimotor rhythm (SMR) power, a rhythmic brain oscillation physiologically linked to motor imagery, is a popular Brain-Machine Interface (BMI) paradigm, but its interplay with slower cortical rhythms, also involved in movement preparation and cognitive processing, is not entirely understood. In this study, we evaluated the changes in phase and power of slow cortical activity in delta and theta bands, during a motor imagery task controlled by an SMR-based BMI system. In Experiment I, EEG of 20 right-handed healthy volunteers was recorded performing a motor-imagery task using an SMR-based BMI controlling a visual animation, and during task-free intervals.

Intelligent Multimodal Framework for Human Assistive Robotics Based on Computer Vision Algorithms.

Assistive technologies help all persons with disabilities to improve their accessibility in all aspects of their life. The AIDE European project contributes to the improvement of current assistive technologies by developing and testing a modular and adaptive multimodal interface customizable to the individual needs of people with disabilities. This paper describes the computer vision algorithms part of the multimodal interface developed inside the AIDE European project.

Feasibility and safety of shared EEG/EOG and vision-guided autonomous whole-arm exoskeleton control to perform activities of daily living.

Arm and finger paralysis, e.g. due to brain stem stroke, often results in the inability to perform activities of daily living (ADLs) such as eating and drinking.

Human arm joints reconstruction algorithm in rehabilitation therapies assisted by end-effector robotic devices.

Background: End-effector robots are commonly used in robot-assisted neuro-rehabilitation therapies for upper limbs where the patient's hand can be easily attached to a splint. Nevertheless, they are not able to estimate and control the kinematic configuration of the upper limb during the therapy. However, the Range of Motion (ROM) together with the clinical assessment scales offers a comprehensive assessment to the therapist.

A four-state Markov model of sleep-wakefulness dynamics along light/dark cycle in mice.

Behavioral states alternate between wakefulness (wk), rapid eye movement (rem) and non-rem (nrem) sleep at time scale of hours i.e., light and dark cycle rhythms and from several tens of minutes to seconds (i.

A Comparative Analysis of 2D and 3D Tasks for Virtual Reality Therapies Based on Robotic-Assisted Neurorehabilitation for Post-stroke Patients.

Post-stroke neurorehabilitation based on virtual therapies are performed completing repetitive exercises shown in visual electronic devices, whose content represents imaginary or daily life tasks. Currently, there are two ways of visualization of these task. 3D virtual environments are used to get a three dimensional space that represents the real world with a high level of detail, whose realism is determinated by the resolucion and fidelity of the objects of the task.

Kinematic reconstruction of the human arm joints in robot-aided therapies with Hermes robot.

This paper presents a kinematic reconstruction algorithm for the variables of the human arm joints in robot-aided neurorehabilitation therapies. The presented algorithm uses the end effector of a rehabilitation robot and an accelerometer placed onto the upper arm to compute accurate values of the human arm chain. The goal of this algorithm is to obtain the joint values of the patient's arm to provide objective information to the therapist about the progress of the patient and to study the effectiveness of these kind of therapies.

Estimation of Human Arm Joints Using Two Wireless Sensors in Robotic Rehabilitation Tasks.

This paper presents a novel kinematic reconstruction of the human arm chain with five degrees of freedom and the estimation of the shoulder location during rehabilitation therapy assisted by end-effector robotic devices. This algorithm is based on the pseudoinverse of the Jacobian through the acceleration of the upper arm, measured using an accelerometer, and the orientation of the shoulder, estimated with a magnetic angular rate and gravity (MARG) device. The results show a high accuracy in terms of arm joints and shoulder movement with respect to the real arm measured through an optoelectronic system.

Supervised and dynamic neuro-fuzzy systems to classify physiological responses in robot-assisted neurorehabilitation.

This paper presents the application of an Adaptive Resonance Theory (ART) based on neural networks combined with Fuzzy Logic systems to classify physiological reactions of subjects performing robot-assisted rehabilitation therapies. First, the theoretical background of a neuro-fuzzy classifier called S-dFasArt is presented. Then, the methodology and experimental protocols to perform a robot-assisted neurorehabilitation task are described.