A Physio-Neuro Approach to Accelerate Functional Recovery of Impaired Hand after Stroke

Hand function disability after stroke is the greatest obstacle to independent living. Rehabilitation of hand function is known to be more effective if patients can start therapy as early post-stroke as possible, and dedicate maximum therapy hours during hospital stay. Constraints such as a rapidly increasing patient-therapist ratio and a shortage of beds for stroke patients often prevent ideal rehabilitation therapy. One solution could be a system that can guide the patient in practicing key functional hand movements unsupervised as well as record data for tracking and reviewing progress. This paper describes a pilot experiment with a new Rehabilitation Platform. It consists of a mirror-image instruction video which guides the stroke patient through a therapy protocol; an arm glove provides EMG biofeedback simultaneously to highlight incremental progress and self-regulation in muscle use. This forms a part of the overall physio-neuro platform named “SynPhNe”. It is being tested to drive an accelerated hand function rehabilitation process. Initial results suggest that in early post-stroke therapy, it may be possible to accelerate functional recovery of the hand by leveraging the ability of the brain-muscle system to respond favourably to both components of the platform - mirror image visual input and biofeedback.