STTR Phase II: Low-Cost Portable Telerehabilitation System for Intelligent Stretching and Remote Assessment of Hypertonic Arm Joints

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This STTR Phase II research project seeks to develop technologies needed for rehabilitation of post-stroke patients with neurological impairment. For those patients, physical therapy followed by timely examination is the cornerstone of the rehabilitation. However, not all patients receive sufficient therapy due to limited access to expert healthcare services. There is a need for a tele-rehabilitation system that can stretch the spastic/contractured joints under accurate control at a remote location and provide remote access to expert healthcare services. This Phase II research will focus on improving the technology and making it suitable for the market by improving the design of the tele-rehabilitation system for multi-purpose applications to treat/evaluate multiple joints in the arm. It will make the portable device stand-alone with built-in capabilities of passive stretching, voluntary movement exercise, and tele-assessment of joint range of motion, stiffness, spasticity, and catch displayed in an intuitive way. Finally, a clinical test of the tele-rehabilitation system on stroke survivors will be conducted. This portable and low-cost stretching device is suitable for home use, making frequent and convenient treatment accessible to a large number of patients. It can potentially have broad impact on rehabilitation of stroke and other neurological impairments. The intelligent stretching concept was developed to insure safe and effective treatment and it will also be useful in other applications dealing with human-machine interface.