Objective motor assessment for personalized rehabilitation of upper extremity in brain injury patients.

BACKGROUND: The increasing number of patients with acquired brain injury and the current subjectivity of the conventional upper extremity (UE) assessment tests require new objective assessment techniques. OBJECTIVE: This research proposes a novel objective motor assessment (OMA) methodology based on the Fugl-Meyer assessment (FMA). The goals are to automatically calculate the objective scores (OSs) of FMA-UE movements (as well as a global OS) and to interpret the estimated OSs. METHODS: Fifteen patients participated in the study. The OMA algorithm was designed to detect small-scale variations in UE movements. The OSs for 14 FMA-UE movements and the global OSs were automatically calculated using the algorithm and evaluated by 2 therapists. The interpretation of the global OSs was performed at 3 levels: by item, movement and globally. RESULTS: The global OSs calculated by our algorithm had a significant correlation with the therapists' scores (0.783 and 0.938,<0.01). All OSs for each movement were correlated with the scores given by the therapists. The correlation coefficient can reach values as high as 0.981 (p < 0.01). CONCLUSIONS: We provide a new objective assessment tool for therapists to help them improve the diagnostic accuracy and to achieve a more personalized and potentially effective physical rehabilitation of brain injury patients.