C-BER - Book Chapters

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Analysis and quantification of upper-limb movement in motor rehabilitation after stroke

( 2017) Silva,RM ; Sousa,E ; Fonseca,P ; Pinheiro,AR ; Silva,C ; Miguel Velhote Correia ; Mouta,S

It is extremely difficult to reduce the relations between the several body parts that perform human motion to a simplified set of features. Therefore, the study of the upper-limb functionality is still in development, partly due to the wider range of actions and strategies for motor execution. This, in turn, leads to inconsistent upper-limb movement parameterization. We propose a methodology to assess and quantify the upper-limb motor execution. Extracting key variables from different sources, we intended to quantify healthy upper-limb movement and use these parameters to quantify motor execution during rehabilitation after stroke. In order to do so, we designed an experimental setup defining a workspace for the execution of the action recording kinematic data. Results reveal an effect of object and instruction on the timing of upper-limb movement, indicating that the spatiotemporal analysis of kinematic data can be used as a quantification parameter for motor rehabilitation stages and methods. © Springer International Publishing AG 2017.