Qualitative evaluations of gait rehabilitation via EMG muscle activation pattern: Repetition, symmetry, and smoothness

Abstract

Evaluations for gait rehabilitation is difficult because gait parameters change with individuals and situations, such as walking speeds and step length. Doctors suggest proper rehabilitation programs for patients after performing initial clinical evaluations. For the use of design and control of the NaTUre-gaits (Natural and Tuneable Rehabilitation Gait System), this paper provides a clinical analysis through an EMG measurement study. A methodology for gait qualitative evaluation is proposed, based on repetition, symmetry, and smoothness characteristics of the walking muscle activation pattern. Clinical trials conducted at a local hospital verify the methodology with comparison between healthy person walking and patient walking. Result has shown the effectiveness of the evaluation methodology developed in this study.

Effects of ground contact for overground walking on a robotic gait trainer

“…This processing will retain the signal's energy, then Root Means Square (RMS) was used for smoothing and the size of the window was 50 milliseconds. A 6Hz low-pass Infinite Impulse Response (IIR) filter was used with Butterworth approximation [16]. As a common knowledge, the absolute magnitude of EMG has less consistent for individuals and researches focus on the shape of EMG profile, times of peak or onset/cessation of myoelectric activity [17].…”

EMG based rehabilitation systems - approaches for ALS patients in different stages

“…Recently, it is considered that one of the most challenging HCI interfaces is the linkage of computer communications with human's neural activities [11]. Various bio-signals, such as electroencephalogram (EEG) [12], electromyogram (EMG) [13][14][15][16][17] and electrooculogram (EOG) [18], are employed to translate to machine commands to drive the computer tasks. Particularly, EMG based controller can be designed to perform the body movement to command the computer programs, which is beneficial for ALS patients.…”

“…The EMG signals were used to control pointer [14], mouse cursor [15] and exoskeleton [16]. Some EMG biofeedback systems were designed for clinical evaluation and physical rehabilitation [17].…”

Initial System Evaluation of an Overground Rehabilitation Gait Training Robot (NaTUre-gaits)

“…Some researchers [13][14][15] presented data with standard deviation, correlation coefficients, analysis of variance, etc. It has been highlighted that repetition and symmetry estimation will be measured by portable sensors [16]. No application of autocorrelation analysis is used to evaluate robotic-assisted overground walking training.…”

“…To address the above-mentioned issues, this paper presents the design and development of an overground walking rehabilitation device incorporating pelvic motion control together with active hip, knee and ankle assistance, named NaTUre-gaits (Natural and TUnable rehabilitation gait system) [1,16,18]. The mechanical structure, the associated control framework and the system features are presented in Section 2.…”