Instrumented evaluation of upper extremity motor function for stroke rehabilitation applications

Abstract

Nowadays rehabilitation physicians use combined methods for the assessment of patients’ motor functions and use various scoring systems such as International Classification of Functioning, disability and health (ICF), Barthel index of activities and daily living, Wolf motor function test and so on. Despite the fact, that application of WMFT is plausible due to its’ high reliability (David, 2001) and it is comparable with other methods similar to Cronbach alpha (Rinske, 2010), there is still a risk of subjectivity because WMFT evaluation scale ranges from 0 to 5 and different physicians can score the same movement with different scores. Therefore, the main purpose of our research is to explore the possibilities of quantitative evaluation of upper extremity function via instrumented analysis, thus proposing an additional tool that could facilitate the monitoring of rehabilitation process and with larger accuracy. The basic task of this article is to introduce the numerical method and kinematic testing to obtain objective and sensitive quantification of UE movement during combined WMFT and ICF exercises.