Upper extremity rehabilitation of children with cerebral palsy using accelerometer feedback on a multitouch display

Abstract

-Cerebral palsy is a non-progressive neurological disorder caused by disturbances to the developing brain. Physical and occupational therapy, if started at a young age, can help minimizing complications such as joint contractures, and can improve limb range of motion and coordination. While current forms of therapy for children with cerebral palsy are effective in minimizing symptoms, many children find them boring or repetitive. We have designed a system for use in upper-extremity rehabilitation sessions, making use of a multitouch display. The system allows children to be engaged in interactive gaming scenarios, while intensively performing desired exercises. It supports games which require completion of specific stretching or coordination exercises using one or both hands, as well as games which use physical, or "tangible" input mechanisms. To encourage correct posture during therapeutic exercises, we use a wireless kinematic sensor, worn on the patient's trunk, as a feedback channel for the games. The system went through several phases of design, incorporating input from observations of therapy and clinical sessions, as well as feedback from medical professionals. This paper describes the hardware platform, presents the design objectives derived from our iterative design phases and meetings with clinical personnel, discusses our current game designs and identifies areas of future work.

The fun.tast.tisch. project

“…Dunne et al [11] discuss the application of a multitouch tabletop system for upper extremity rehabilitation of children with cerebral palsy. They use the predecessor of the SUR40 (which already offered support for object recognition) that was also utilized by Schacherl [32], and describe several games involving both touch and tangible inputs.…”

FroggyBobby: An exergame to support children with motor problems practicing motor coordination exercises during therapeutic interventions

“…These experiences are relevant to us, as we are interested in designing exergames to support children as well. Research in exergames for children with motor problems is mainly focused in children with cerebral palsy (Deutsch, Borbely, Filler, Huhn, & Guarrera-Bowlby, 2008;Dunne, Do-Lenh, O' Laighin, Shen, & Bonato, 2010;Hernandez et al, 2012). For example, Hernandez et al (2012) designed and developed an exergame that enables children with cerebral palsy to use a rehabilitation bicycle to control an avatar riding a unicycle while carrying a tray full of eggs in each hand.…”

Assistive Smart Sensing Devices for Gait Rehabilitation Monitoring

“…Frequent solutions used for objective evaluation of rehabilitation processes are based on the use of inertial sensors attached to the human body [7,8]. A set of wearable solutions developed by Postolache et al, characterized by Bluetooth connectivity as part of a smart system was used for motor and cardiac activity monitoring [9].…”