Upper-limb hemiparesis caused by stroke can severely limit a survivor's ability to perform activities of daily living. Treatment involves intensive, repetitive therapy that can strain limited resources. Rehabilitation devices have been developed to help reduce therapist burden and increase access to therapy. However, adoption is complicated due to their expense and use of complex actuators. A rehabilitation tool without actuators was developed to perform reaching under varying resistance in the transverse plane and measure the reaction force at the handle. Force measurements from the device were validated through comparison with a standard force plate. A new method to calculate the center of applied pressure on a spherical handle mounted on a load cell was developed and validated using 3D modeling. Finally, a study conducted on healthy subjects demonstrated directional effects on the trajectory length and straightness, while resistance effects were seen for the maximum force, time-to-peak velocity and time-to-peak force.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/44072 |
| Date | 19 March 2014 |
| Creators | Wasim, Tahir |
| Contributors | Mihailidis, Alex |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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