Quantification method of motor function recovery of fingers by using the device for home rehabilitation.

After leaving hospital, patients can carry out rehabilitation by using rehabilitation devices. However, they cannot evaluate the recovery by themselves. For this problem, a device which can both carry out the rehabilitation and evaluation of the degree of recovery is required. This paper proposes the method that quantifies the recovery of the paralysis of fingers to evaluate a patient automatically. A finger movement is measured by a pressure sensor on the rehabilitation device we have developed. A measured data is used as a time-series signal, and the recovery of the paralysis is quantified by calculating the dissimilarity between a healthy subject's signal and the patient's signal. The results of those dissimilarities are integrated over all finger to be used as a quantitative scale of recovery. From the experiment conducted with hemiplegia patients and healthy subjects, we could trace the process of the recovery by the proposed method.