Novel kinematic indices for quantifying upper limb ability and dexterity after cervical spinal cord injury

Abstract

Loss of motor function is a consequence after cervical spinal cord injury. Three-dimensional kinematic analysis equipments are used for quantifying human movements in clinical laboratories. These systems may provide objectivity to the patient assessments. Nowadays, the kinematic variables found in the literature have some deficiencies, and the efficient management of these data sets is a demand and a challenge in the clinical setting. The aim of the present paper is to propose a set of novel kinematic indices, as a combination of kinematic variables, for quantifying upper limb motor disorders in terms of characteristics in relation to ability and dexterity such as accuracy, efficiency, and coordination. These indices are defined for measuring patients' motor performance during the activity of daily living of drinking from a glass. This task is included within the upper limb rehabilitative process that patients receive. The main contribution of this research, with the aim of detecting upper limb impairments in patients, consists of the proposal of three kinematic indices from experimental data, whose results are dimensionless and relative to a pattern of healthy subjects. We hope that kinematic indices proposed are a step toward the standardization of the quantitative assessment of movement characteristics and functional impairments.

Serious Game Platform with Haptic Feedback and EMG Monitoring for Upper Limb Rehabilitation and Smoothness Quantification on Spinal Cord Injury Patients

“…Moreover, the results obtained were strong indicators that movement planning takes place in terms of UL distal segment, by means of hand trajectories rather than joint rotations [55,56]. Nevertheless, smoothness metric has shown to be discriminative between healthy and neurological patients when smoothness is computed from the peaks number in the speed profile [20,21]. Therefore, in this paper, smoothness has been measured by computing the peaks number within the speed profile.…”

“…This control motor characteristic has been quantified by means of different variables, extracted of the movement analysis as the peaks number in the speed profile, the ratio between the maximal and mean velocity and the jerk metric computed as the time derivative of acceleration [13,19]. As our expertise in this field, after the developmental work of kinematic indices applied to spinal cord injured patients, smoothness metric computed from the peaks number in the speed profile is discriminative between healthy and neurological patients [20,21].…”

Análisis biomecánico para confirmar el diagnóstico en neurorrehabilitación

“…Los resultados de los índices cinemáticos se representan en %, relativos al patrón de referencia formado por un grupo de personas sanas (de los Reyes-Guzmán, 2016;de los Reyes Guzmán, 2017). Se ha obtenido en el miembro superior izquierdo un menor desempeño en los índices Precisión (64.92) y Agilidad (62.79) que aquellos en el miembro superior derecho (91.68 y 88.90, respectivamente).…”

Smoothness and Efficiency Metrics Behavior after an Upper Extremity Training with Robic Humanoid Robot in Paediatric Spinal Cord Injured Patients

“…Smooth movement is defined as movement towards a target without deviations from its ideal trajectory [8]. Also, the analysis of the efficiency metric is of special interest from the pattern of the executed UE movement based on the evaluation of the trajectory length [10]. Both metrics of UE movement quality, smoothness and efficiency are computed from kinematic data from the hand and are known to be affected in the adult SCI population [9,10] but have not been addressed in children.…”