Stroke often leads to hand motor dysfunction, and effective rehabilitation requires keeping patients engaged and motivated. Among the existing automated rehabilitation approaches, data glove-based systems are not easy to wear for patients due to spasticity, and single sensor-based approaches generally provided prohibitively limited information. We thus propose a wearable multimodal serious games approach for hand movement training after stroke. A force myography (FMG), electromyography (EMG), and inertial measurement unit (IMU)-based multi-sensor fusion model was proposed for hand movement classification, which was worn on the user’s affected arm. Two movement recognition-based serious games were developed for hand movement and cognition training. Ten stroke patients with mild to moderate motor impairments (Brunnstrom Stage for Hand II-VI) performed experiments while playing interactive serious games requiring 12 activities-of-daily-living (ADLs) hand movements taken from the Fugl Meyer Assessment. Feasibility was evaluated by movement classification accuracy and qualitative patient questionnaires. The offline classification accuracy using combined FMG-EMG-IMU was 81.0% for the 12 movements, which was significantly higher than any single sensing modality; only EMG, only FMG, and only IMU were 69.6, 63.2, and 47.8%, respectively. Patients reported that they were more enthusiastic about hand movement training while playing the serious games as compared to conventional methods and strongly agreed that they subjectively felt that the proposed training could be beneficial for improving upper limb motor function. These results showed that multimodal-sensor fusion improved hand gesture classification accuracy for stroke patients and demonstrated the potential of this proposed approach to be used as upper limb movement training after stroke.
Hand gesture classification and finger angle estimation are both critical for intuitive human–computer interaction. However, most approaches study them in isolation. We thus propose a dual-output deep learning model to enable simultaneous hand gesture classification and finger angle estimation. Data augmentation and deep learning were used to detect spatial-temporal features via a wristband with ten modified barometric sensors. Ten subjects performed experimental testing by flexing/extending each finger at the metacarpophalangeal joint while the proposed model was used to classify each hand gesture and estimate continuous finger angles simultaneously. A data glove was worn to record ground-truth finger angles. Overall hand gesture classification accuracy was 97.5% and finger angle estimation R 2 was 0.922, both of which were significantly higher than shallow existing learning approaches used in isolation. The proposed method could be used in applications related to the human–computer interaction and in control environments with both discrete and continuous variables.
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