Characterizing Multiple Patterns of Motor Intent Using Spatial-Temporal Information for Intuitively Active Motor Training in Stroke Survivors.

Upper extremity motor function loss severely affects stroke survivors during daily life activities. Different rehabilitation robotic systems have been developed to allow stroke survivors regain their motor function. Meanwhile, most of the robots only operate in a passive mode and restrict the users to navigate predefined trajectories which may not align with their motion intent, thus limiting motor recovery. One way to resolve this issue would be to utilize a decoded movement intent to trigger intuitively active motor training for patients. In this direction, this study proposed and investigated the use of spatial-temporal neuromuscular descriptor (STD) for optimal decoding of multiple patterns of movement intents in patient to provide inputs for active motor training in the rehabilitation robotic systems. The STD performance was validated using High-Density surface electromyogram recordings from five stroke survivors who performed 21 limb movements. Experimental results show that the STD achieved a significant reduction in limb movement classification error (13.36%) even in the presence of the inevitable White Gaussian Noise compared to other methods (p<0.05). The STD also showed obvious class separability for individual movement. Findings from this study suggest that the STD may provide potential inputs for intuitively active motor training in stroke rehabilitation robotic systems.Clinical Relevance- This study showed that spatial-temporal neuromuscular information could aid adequate decoding of movement intents upon which intuitively active motor training could be achieved in stroke rehabilitation robotic systems.