Research project: Quantitative measurements of impairment and how they relate to activity in the upper limb of the older adult post-stroke
Loss of upper-limb function is a problem following stroke. Recent research has identified potential for recovery with intensive practice and has led to the emergence of new treatments. Progress is hampered by lack of: reliable objective measures of impairment, understanding of the relationship between impairments and activity limitation and underlying mechanisms associated with loss and recovery of function. An instrumented rig has been designed, built and validated to measure impairments: muscle weakness, motor control, spasticity, muscle co-activation and passive stiffness. Signal processing and data analysis techniques generate useful indices and metrics to quantify impairments and evaluate their relative contribution to loss of arm activity.