High-tech sensor records brain signals regulating healthy muscle functions before simulating them in affected limb.
http://gulfnews.com/news/uae/education/professor-designs-smart-suit-to-help-stroke-victims-1.1950405
Abu Dhabi: With stroke victims often having to deal with physical
side-effects like muscle weakness and paralysis that affects their daily
functions, a UAE University professor is in the process of developing a
smart suit that will reestablish the links between the brain and the
muscles to help with the rehabilitation process.
“The idea is to
understand how our brain is controlling our muscles, after a stroke the
brain loses the best way of communicating with the muscles, which causes
paralysis, so we need to teach the brain again to communicate with
these muscles,” said Fady Al Najjar, assistant professor in the
Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at UAEU, and the
developer behind the smart suit.
Explaining how the smart suit
will work to regain the brain and muscle functions, Al Najjar said that a
high-tech sensor would be placed on the arm that is still functioning
normally, with the recorded signals then transferred to the affected
arm.
“Let’s say that the person had a stroke in his left arm and
he still has normal movement on his right arm; if I were to ask that
person to move his right arm, his brain would pick the correct muscle
patterns to move that arm. So, once that happens, our sensors will
record these patterns from the right arm and mimic similar patterns and
send them to the arm affected by the stroke through vibrations,” he
said.
“By doing this we can speed up the recovery process. The
original muscle patterns are always stored in the intact side, we just
need it to lead the training in the affected side,” he added.
Al
Najjar said that no such technology is currently available on the market
to help with the stroke rehabilitation process, pointing to the
untapped potential of the smart suit.
“Reading muscle patterns and
highlighting motor skills is an area that I have worked on before;
what’s new here with this work is how to use the motor skill information
to recall the healthy patterns from the brain to the muscles by using
vibrations. No such technology is currently available on the market for
such work.
“The smart suit will be very beneficial because we are
not using another person’s brain patterns and signals; the sensors are
studying and recording the brain signals of the affected person himself
and then transfering it to the arm that has lost its normal functions,”
he added.
Al Najjar said he is still working on finalising the
smart suit, but noted that doctors in the UAE were positive about his
project.
“Doctors in the UAE have so far been receptive to the
smart suit and, at the moment, I am looking to get the approval of the
ethics committee before partnering with Al Ain Hospital on a pilot test
with patients.
“I still have to work on simplifying the smart suit and making it easy to work as well as cost-efficient,” he added.
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