Perform Rehabilitation Exercises Research Articles

Tangible and Mid-Air Interactions in Hand-Held Augmented Reality for Upper Limb Rehabilitation: An Evaluation of User Experience and Motor Performance

Hand-held augmented reality (AR) offers accessible, interactive rehabilitation options for patients with upper limb motor deficits. Incorporating hand-involved interactions (e.g., tangible and mid-air interactions) into hand-held AR provides patients with intuitive manners to perform rehabilitation exercises mimicking real-world activities. Previous work has shown the importance of user experience and motor performance in rehabilitation systems, but little was known in the literature regarding the impact of hand-involved interactions in hand-held AR on user experience and motor performance in rehabilitation exercises. Hence, this study aims to evaluate user experience and motor performance when using three types of hand-involved interactions in hand-held AR rehabilitation: (1) tangible cube (i.e., a space-multiplexed tangible interaction with a physical cube acting as a real proxy to manipulate a virtual object in the same form); (2) tangible controller (i.e., a time-multiplexed tangible interaction with a physical controller applied to manipulate a virtual object); and (3) hand motion (i.e., a form of mid-air interaction to move a virtual object with hands). Based on the findings from self-report, electroencephalography (EEG), and performance measures, this study reveals the advantages of the tangible cube over the tangible controller, both superior to the hand motion in hand-held AR rehabilitation regarding user experience and motor performance. This study offers new understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of various interaction techniques in hand-held AR rehabilitation, emphasizing crucial design considerations for these systems, with a focus on user experience and motor performance in upper limb rehabilitation.

A gamified social robotics platform for intensive therapies in neurorehabilitation

The use of social assistive robots for interactive stimulation has strong potential in neurorehabilitation therapies. It is of particular interest in the case of pediatric patients to promote children’s motivation and adherence, specially when those robots are able of guide gamified activities, as it is the case of NAOTherapist. NAOTherapist is a Social Assistive Robotics (SAR) platform for hands-off rehabilitation based on upper-limb activities, that was originally designed for pediatric patients with Cerebral Palsy (CP) or Obstetric Braxial Plexus Palsy (OBPP). Formerly, it endowed the therapists with tools to perform rehabilitation exercises. This paper proposes the gamification of NAOTherapist in order to incorporate additional characteristics which allow its intensive use in new rehabilitation procedures, such as the Hand-Arm Bimanual Intensive Therapy (HABIT). This intensive therapy setting involves daily activities in several consecutive days, which require a strong engagement of the patients with the therapeutic methods and the acceptation of the NAOTherapist as a rehabilitation system. The gamified system shows very accurate results considering the different aspects defined in the USUS methodology; namely Usability, Social acceptance, User experience and Societal impact.

Telerehabilitation model in operated individuals with upper limb and chest trauma due to road traffic accidents

Implementing telerehabilitation methods for individuals injured in road traffic accidents with upper limb and chest trauma is critically essential for improving patients' functional recovery, ensuring effective interaction between the patient and the rehabilitation specialist, and reducing overall time and costs associated with rehabilitation. The purpose of the study is to assess the effectiveness of applying telemedicine monitoring tools and the developed rehabilitation model in the functional recovery of operated patients with upper limb and chest trauma. The study included patients who underwent surgery due to upper limb and chest trauma resulting from road traffic accidents. Patients were divided into two groups: retrospective (186 patients) underwent standard rehabilitation, while the main group (62 patients) was involved in the developed telerehabilitation model programme. Functional outcomes were analysed using the qDASH scale, including the average time spent by patients on rehabilitation per day, the number of patient visits to the medical facility within 3 weeks, and the total time spent by the rehabilitation specialist per patient over 3 weeks. After rehabilitation, over 80% of patients in both groups demonstrated positive and satisfactory results, with a slight advantage of excellent results in the main group (12.90% versus 9.14%). Patients in the main group spent more time on their rehabilitation (41+3 minutes per day) and had access to progress monitoring functions and communication with the doctor, which increased their motivation and involvement. Telerehabilitation remarkably reduced the number of required doctor visits (5±2 versus 11±3 visits) and the time spent by the rehabilitation specialist on each patient over 3 weeks (132±12 minutes versus 243±17 minutes). The average time per day spent by the injured individuals on rehabilitation exercises in the main group was 41±3 minutes, while in the retrospective group, it was 31±7 minutes. The telerehabilitation model is an equivalent alternative and complement to standard rehabilitation methods. Its advantages include increased motivation for performing rehabilitation exercises and the ability to conduct training in a distance-controlled environment

Balance rehabilitation for patients with Multiple Sclerosis using a Kinect®-based virtual training program

BackgroundPatients with multiple sclerosis (MS) often experience balance issues during physical activities. Traditional rehabilitation exercises such as stretching, resistance, and aerobic training have been found to be effective, but can be repetitive and tedious, leading to reduced patient motivation and adherence. Furthermore, direct supervision by a therapist is not always possible. MethodsThe aim of this study was to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of a virtual training program incorporating visual feedback from the Kinect® sensor in male patients with multiple sclerosis. Forty-five participants, with an age range of 22–56 years (mean age = 39), were randomly assigned to one of three equal groups, including two experimental groups and one control group. The experimental groups participated in eight-week exercise interventions, with each session lasting 20 to 30 min and occurring three times per week. In contrast, the control group received no interventions. Within the experimental groups, one was exposed to conventional balance exercises, whereas the other engaged in the proposed virtual training program. Both of these groups undertook three balance exercises, namely the single-foot stance, lunge maneuvers, and arm/leg stretching routines. The assessment encompassed diverse facets of balance, including parameters of 10 Meter Walk Time, Berg Balance Scale, Static Balance Score, and Time-Up and Go Scale, as well as the quality of life, gauged through the Multiple Sclerosis Quality of Life (MSQOL)-54 Questionnaire. The effect of test variables was investigated using analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), while the independent samples t-test was used to check for significant differences among the groups. The effects of the groups were compared using a paired samples t-test. ResultsThe findings revealed that both rehabilitation programs positively affected the dependent variables compared to the control group. However, the significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores of the experimental groups indicated the effectiveness of the proposed program compared to the traditional method. ConclusionsEntertaining virtual training programs utilizing visual feedback can be effective for rehabilitating patients with MS. The proposed method enables patients to perform rehabilitation exercises at home with high motivation, while accurate information about the treatment process are provided to the therapist.

Design and Analysis of a Supine Ankle Rehabilitation Robot for Early Stroke Recovery

Existing ankle rehabilitation robots are large, difficult to move, and mostly designed for seated use, which cannot meet the early bedridden rehabilitation goals of stroke patients. To address these issues, a supine ankle rehabilitation robot (S-ARR) specifically designed for early bedridden rehabilitation of stroke patients has been proposed. The S-ARR is designed to be easily movable and adaptable to different heights. It features a variable workspace with mechanical limiters at the rotating joints. A kinematic model has been constructed, and the kinematic simulation of the S-ARR has been analyzed. A control system scheme for the S-ARR has been proposed. Additionally, experiments have been conducted on the prototype to measure joint range of motion and perform rehabilitation exercises. The simulation and experimental results demonstrate that the S-ARR has a feasible workspace and a relatively smooth motion process, enabling it to achieve supine ankle rehabilitation training. This indicates that the design of the supine ankle rehabilitation robot is reasonable, capable of meeting the requirements for ankle joint rehabilitation training, and has practical utility.

An analysis of clinical outcomes and essential parameters for designing effective games for upper limb rehabilitation: A scoping review.

Upper limb disabilities are one of the most common disabilities among different groups of people who always need rehabilitation. One of the important methods in helping to carry out efficient rehabilitation processes and exercises is the use of games. The aim of this study is to identify the parameters necessary to design a successful rehabilitation game and the outcomes of using these games in upper limb disabilities rehabilitation. This scoping review was conducted by searching the Web of Science, PubMed, and Scopus. The eligibility criteria were: any form of game-based upper limb rehabilitation, published in a peer-reviewed journal, published in English, and not include articles that did not focus upper limb disabilities rehabilitation games, review, meta-analysis, or conference papers. Analysis of collected data was done using descriptive statistics (frequency and percentage). The search strategy retrieved 537 relevant articles. Finally, after removing irrelevant and repetitive articles, 21 articles were included in this study. Among the six categories of diseases or complications of upper limb disabilities, games were mostly designed for stroke patients. Smart wearables, robots and telerehabilitation were three technologies that were used for rehabilitation along with games. Sports and shooters were the most used games for upper limb disability rehabilitation. Among 99 necessary parameters for designing and implementing a successful rehabilitation game in ten categories. "Increasing the patient's motivation to perform rehabilitation exercises", "Game difficulty levels", "Enjoying and the attractiveness of the game for patients", and "Providing positive or negative audiovisual feedback" were the most important parameters. "Improvement in musculoskeletal performance" and "Increasing users' enjoyment/joy of therapeutic exercises and their motivation to perform these exercises" were the most important positive outcomes, and "Mild discomfort such as nausea and dizziness when using games" was the only negative outcome. The successful design of a game according to the parameters identified in the present study can lead to an increase in the positive outcomes of using games in the rehabilitation of disabilities. The study results indicate that upper limb therapeutic exercise augmented with virtual reality games may be highly effective in enhancing motor rehabilitation outcomes.

Intelligent Evaluation Method of Human Cervical Vertebra Rehabilitation Based on Computer Vision.

With the changes in human work and lifestyle, the incidence of cervical spondylosis is increasing substantially, especially for adolescents. Cervical spine exercises are an important means to prevent and rehabilitate cervical spine diseases, but no mature unmanned evaluating and monitoring system for cervical spine rehabilitation training has been proposed. Patients often lack the guidance of a physician and are at risk of injury during the exercise process. In this paper, we first propose a cervical spine exercise assessment method based on a multi-task computer vision algorithm, which can replace physicians to guide patients to perform rehabilitation exercises and evaluations. The model based on the Mediapipe framework is set up to construct a face mesh and extract features to calculate the head pose angles in 3-DOF (three degrees of freedom). Then, the sequential angular velocity in 3-DOF is calculated based on the angle data acquired by the computer vision algorithm mentioned above. After that, the cervical vertebra rehabilitation evaluation system and index parameters are analyzed by data acquisition and experimental analysis of cervical vertebra exercises. A privacy encryption algorithm combining YOLOv5 and mosaic noise mixing with head posture information is proposed to protect the privacy of the patient's face. The results show that our algorithm has good repeatability and can effectively reflect the health status of the patient's cervical spine.

Mathematical Analysis and Motion Capture System Utilization Method for Standardization Evaluation of Tracking Objectivity of 6-DOF Arm Structure for Rehabilitation Training Exercise Therapy Robot.

A treatment method for suppressing shoulder pain by reducing the secretion of neurotransmitters in the brain is being studied in compliance with domestic and international standards. A robot is being developed to assist physical therapists in shoulder rehabilitation exercise treatment. The robot used for rehabilitation therapy enables the training of patients to perform rehabilitation exercises repeatedly. However, the biomechanical movement (or motion) of the shoulder joint should be accurately designed to enhance efficiency using a shoulder rehabilitation robot. Furthermore, safely treating patients by accurately evaluating biomechanical movements in compliance with domestic and international standards is a major task. Therefore, an in-depth analysis of shoulder movement is essential for understanding the mechanism of shoulder rehabilitation using robots. This paper proposes a method for analyzing shoulder movements. The rotation angle and range of motion (ROM) of the shoulder joint are measured by attaching a marker to the body and analyzing the inverse kinematics. The first motion is abduction and adduction, and the second is external and internal rotation. The location information of the marker is transmitted to an application software through an infrared camera. For the analysis using an inverse kinematics solution, five males and five females participated in the motion capture experiment. The subjects did not have any disability, and abduction and adduction were repeated 10 times. As a result, ROM of the abduction and adduction were 148° with males and 138.7° in females. Moreover, ROM of the external and internal rotation were 111.2° with males and 106° in females. Because this study enables tracking of the center coordinates of the joint suitably through a motion capture system, inverse kinematics can be accurately calculated. Additionally, a mathematical inverse kinematics equation will utilize follow-up study for designing an upper rehabilitations robot. The proposed method is assessed to be able to contribute to the definition of domestic and international standardization of rehabilitation robots and motion capture for objective evaluation.

Alterations in the Functional Knee Alignment Are Not an Effective Strategy to Modify the Mediolateral Distribution of Knee Forces During Closed Kinetic Chain Exercises.

Pain felt while performing rehabilitation exercises could be a reason for the low adherence of knee osteoarthritis patients to physical rehabilitation. Reducing compressive forces on the most affected knee regions may help to mitigate the pain. Knee frontal plane positioning with respect to pelvis and foot (functional knee alignment) has been shown to modify the mediolateral distribution of the tibiofemoral joint contact force in walking. Hence, different functional knee alignments could be potentially used to modify joint loading during rehabilitation exercises. The aim was to understand whether utilizing different alignments is an effective strategy to unload specific knee areas while performing rehabilitation exercises. Eight healthy volunteers performed 5 exercises with neutral, medial, and lateral knee alignment. A musculoskeletal model was modified for improved prediction of tibiofemoral contact forces and used to evaluate knee joint kinematics, moments, and contact forces. Functional knee alignment had only a small and inconsistent effect on the mediolateral distribution joint contact force. Moreover, the magnitude of tibiofemoral and patellofemoral contact forces, knee moments, and measured muscle activities was not significantly affected by the alignment. Our results suggest that altering the functional knee alignment is not an effective strategy to unload specific knee regions in physical rehabilitation.

Patient and physiotherapist perceptions of the Getting Recovery Right After Neck Dissection (GRRAND) rehabilitation intervention: a qualitative interview study embedded within a feasibility trial

ObjectiveThe Getting Recovery Right After Neck Dissection (GRRAND) intervention is a physiotherapy programme for patients with head and neck cancer who have undergone neck dissection. The aim of this qualitative...

Design of a 6-DoF Cost-effective Differential-drive based Robotic system for Upper-Limb Stroke Rehabilitation.

This paper discusses the design, construction, and characteristics of a six degree of freedom (6-DoF) robotic upper limb stroke rehabilitation device. The device is primarily designed to be used by stroke survivors suffering from hemi-paresis, post stroke therapy. The proposed device is aimed to substitute upper limb exoskeletons or end-effector robotic arm based rehabilitation systems, which are generally bulky, expensive due to customized design, and are used only in clinical settings. The device is capable of aiding patients perform rehabilitation exercises involving abduction, adduction, flexion, and extension movements for the wrist, shoulder joints and flexion, extension, pronation, supination for the elbow joint. The device has a mobile base and uses differential drive principles for movement. The device provides an end-effector plate having force-sensitive resistors (FSRs) on which the patient can rest their hand. The mobile base of the rehabilitation system enables it to aid for a greater range of movements when compared to other end-effector-based upper limb rehabilitation devices. Additionally, a camera is mounted on top of the 6-DoF robotic system to enable finger tracking from a remote system using the MediaPipe framework, and measure the hand instability metric over time to assess patient's performance. Clinical relevance - The 6-DoF rehabilitation system is capable of aiding different range of motions for upper limb. The low-cost generic system is applicable for different physical personalities, enabling quick adoption for large patient populations who are in need of rehabilitation systems. The 6-DoF system is aimed towards clinical, and domestic usage by patients.

Assessment of the effectiveness of physiotherapy in children with cerebral palsy in the opinion of the parents

Abstract
 Many specialists have studied cerebral palsy. Currently, the most accurate definition is that proposed by Bax, who defines cerebral palsy as a disorder of posture and movement caused by damage to the brain. The factors that predispose to the development of this disorder include: pre-contraceptive, prenatal, perinatal and postnatal. Symptoms indicating the possibility of cerebral palsy can be observed already in the neonatal period, therefore it is important to follow pediatric visits, and in case of alarming symptoms, consult a neurologist. Early diagnosis of the disorder will allow the introduction of quick, individualized child physiotherapy, which may strengthen the child's psychomotor development.
 Aim of the research: to assess the effectiveness of physiotherapy in children with cerebral palsy in the opinion of the parents. Material and methods: the proprietary questionnaire and two certified scales were used: Gross Motor Classification System to determine the degree of motor disorders and Manual Ability Classification System to check the degree of manual skills. Results: 67% of parents support the high effectiveness of physiotherapy. Therapeutic sessions most often take place 3-5 times a week (51%); moreover, 97% of children perform rehabilitation exercises at home. Conclusions: Physiotherapy is an effective form of exercise therapy for children with cerebral palsy. The most popular of the methods used in working with children is NDT-Bobath. The desirability of early diagnosis of cerebral palsy is associated with the possibility of quick therapeutic sessions, which translates into benefits in psychomotor development and significantly improves the quality of life.

Educational Intervention in Rehabilitation to Improve Functional Capacity after Hip Arthroplasty: A Scoping Review

(1) Background: The prevalence of coxarthrosis associated with ageing is one of the main reasons for the increase in hip arthroplasty. Educational intervention in the pre- and postoperative period of hip arthroplasty can improve functionality and, consequently, quality of life. Therefore, we intend to map the educational interventions that improve the functional capacity of people undergoing hip arthroplasty on their rehabilitation process. (2) Methods: Scoping review. The search was carried out in the databases: CINAHL complete, MEDLINE Complete, Nursing and Allied Health Collection: Comprehensive, Cochrane Methodology Register, Library, Information Science and Technology s, MedcLatina, and Google Academic. We included studies that evaluated the implementation of educational rehabilitation interventions that enable the empowerment and teaching of people undergoing hip arthroplasty. (3) Results: Thirteen studies were analysed that met the eligibility criteria and allowed the research question to be answered. Education in the perioperative period promotes training to perform rehabilitation exercises, improves the hospitalisation experience, increases participation in the rehabilitation process, allows early mobilisation, and increases the functional potential, thus enabling faster reintegration into society. (4) Conclusion: Early mobilisation plays a very important role in a person′s functional recovery, as well as in the prevention of thromboembolic complications. Exercise produces benefits in relation to physical function, namely, in improving strength, balance, facilitating functional activities, and preventing complications.

Compressed Sensing Image Reconstruction of Ultrasound Image for Treatment of Early Traumatic Myositis Ossificans of Elbow Joint by Electroacupuncture.

This article conducts a retrospective analysis of 500 patients with posttraumatic elbow dysfunction admitted to our department from March 2019 to September 2020. The average time from injury to operation is 11 months (2–20 months). We adopt a personalized treatment method to completely remove the hyperplastic adhesion tissue and heterotopic ossification around the joint, remove part of the joint capsule and ligament, and release it to achieve maximum function. After the operation, an external fixator was used to stabilize the loosened elbow joint, and the patient was guided to perform rehabilitation exercises with the aid of a hinged external fixator, and celecoxib was used to prevent heterotopic ossification. Mayo functional scoring system was used to evaluate the curative effect before and after surgery. The rapid realization of ultrasound imaging under the framework of compressed sensing is studied. Under the premise of ensuring the quality of ultrasound imaging reconstruction, the theory of ultrasound imaging is improved, and a plane wave acoustic scattering ultrasound echo model is established. On this basis, the theory of compressed sensing is introduced, the mathematical model of compressed sensing reconstruction is established, and the fast iterative shrinkage thresholding algorithm (FISTA) of compressed sensing reconstruction is improved to reduce the computational complexity and the number of iterations. This article uses FISTA directly to reconstruct medical ultrasound images, and the reconstruction results are not ideal. Therefore, a simulation model of FISTA training and testing was established using the standard image library. By adding different intensities of noise to all images in the image library, the influence of noise intensity on the quality of FISTA reconstructed images is analyzed, and it is found that the FISTA model has requirements for the quality of the images to be reconstructed and the training set images. In this paper, Rob's blind deconvolution restoration algorithm is used to preprocess the original ultrasound image. The clarity of the texture details of the restored ultrasound image is significantly improved, and the image quality is improved, which meets the above requirements. This paper finally formed a reconstruction model suitable for ultrasound images. The reconstruction strategy verified by the ultrasound images provided by the Institute of Ultrasound Imaging of a medical university has achieved a significant improvement in the quality of ultrasound images.

STROKE REHABILITATION EXERCISE KINECT GAME AS A MODALITY FOR HOME-BASED THERAPY

Traditional rehabilitation is a tedious process which is reducing the patients' motivation to perform rehabilitation exercises. Therefore, patients need a program that can entice them to do rehabilitation exercises at home. This research aims to identify the game's needs based on the traditional rehabilitation, design a prototype of a recovery game based on traditional rehabilitation, and test the effectiveness of the rehabilitation game. There are two different game types in this rehabilitation game, with three different movement types used to interact. The prototype developed based on four elements, which are the elements of rehabilitation game, type of movement rehabilitation exercises, technology constraints faced by post-stroke patients, and the basic principle of interface design. Because of patients face physical constraints, Kinect was used in this game to interact with. Using Kinect, the patient is not bound to any device to interact with the game. The game also introduces a social background that encourages patients to have a friend to play either through competition or cooperation.By evaluating by observation and interviews, the game was accepted by post-stroke patients and their family members. They also provide a suggestion for improvement in the future. The contribution of this research is to measure whether the Kinect game console and this game can help patients do additional recovery exercises at home without the supervision of the therapist

Abstract 1122‐000139: Impact of COVID‐19 on Acute Ischemic Stroke Treatment in Latin America

Introduction : Acute ischemic stroke is one of the leading causes of death and disability in the lower and middle income countries (LMIC). The emergence of COVID‐19 has negatively impacted medical care, specifically AIS treatment, in many parts of the world. In this study, we investigated AIS treatment barriers in high COVID‐19 incidence regions in Latin America. Methods : In our study, we organized the 21 Latin American regions based on the number of COVID‐19 cases from the highest to the lowest. In August 2020, Brazil had the highest number of COVID‐19 cases which was 2,736,298 while Belize had the lowest number of COVID‐19 cases which was 57. Taking the top 5 countries with the highest COVID‐19 cases (Brazil, Peru, Chile, Colombia, and Argentina), we compiled a list of neurologists, neurosurgeons, and neurointerventionalists involved in stroke care. We then sent 100 of these clinicians a survey to understand the effects of the pandemic on stroke treatment in their hospitals. Following the survey, we requested the doctors to set up an interview to delve deeper into the barriers to access to AIS treatment. Out of the 100 clinicians contacted, 16 filled out the survey and 14 doctors set up an interview with us. Results : Using the survey results and the interview data, the top‐5 barriers mentioned were transportation, disease awareness, rehabilitation, shortages in staff, and fear among the public about contracting COVID‐19 at the hospital. About 62% of the doctors indicated that people are scared of coming to the hospital due to the high COVID‐19 cases. Furthermore, 60% of the doctors mentioned that there has been a lack of staff at hospitals which causes a reduction in the number of treatment procedures performed, especially mechanical thrombectomies. Moreover, 50% of the doctors said that the main barrier was transportation delay, which results in time lost before treatment. About 50% of the doctors also mentioned that most of the population does not know what AIS is or its symptoms, resulting in fewer patients seeking appropriate care. Finally, 50% of the doctors said that there has been no sufficient rehabilitation. Many rehab units/hospitals have been converted into COVID‐19 hospitals due to the large number of COVID‐19 patients. Therefore, after a patient has received stroke treatment, they have not been able to recover back to their original healthy status. These barriers have overall decreased AIS treatments in hospitals and have negatively impacted patients who have experienced AIS. Conclusions : Overall, the emergence of COVID‐19 has negatively impacted AIS treatment in regions in Latin America with the highest COVID‐19 cases. Hospitals faced several barriers during the pandemic making it difficult for staff to adjust to those specific circumstances. Based on recommendations that doctors have provided us, we are currently working with doctors in Peru to launch an app that tackles the transportation, educational, and rehabilitation barriers. This app will allow patients to connect with doctors online and perform rehabilitation exercises at the comfort of their home while also being able to learn more about stroke.

MARS: mmWave-based Assistive Rehabilitation System for Smart Healthcare

Rehabilitation is a crucial process for patients suffering from motor disorders. The current practice is performing rehabilitation exercises under clinical expert supervision. New approaches are needed to allow patients to perform prescribed exercises at their homes and alleviate commuting requirements, expert shortages, and healthcare costs. Human joint estimation is a substantial component of these programs since it offers valuable visualization and feedback based on body movements. Camera-based systems have been popular for capturing joint motion. However, they have high-cost, raise serious privacy concerns, and require strict lighting and placement settings. We propose a millimeter-wave (mmWave)-based assistive rehabilitation system (MARS) for motor disorders to address these challenges. MARS provides a low-cost solution with a competitive object localization and detection accuracy. It first maps the 5D time-series point cloud from mmWave to a lower dimension. Then, it uses a convolution neural network (CNN) to estimate the accurate location of human joints. MARS can reconstruct 19 human joints and their skeleton from the point cloud generated by mmWave radar. We evaluate MARS using ten specific rehabilitation movements performed by four human subjects involving all body parts and obtain an average mean absolute error of 5.87 cm for all joint positions. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first rehabilitation movements dataset using mmWave point cloud. MARS is evaluated on the Nvidia Jetson Xavier-NX board. Model inference takes only 64 s and consumes 442 J energy. These results demonstrate the practicality of MARS on low-power edge devices.

Telehealth Using PoseNet-Based System for In-Home Rehabilitation

The increasing cost of healthcare services is accelerating the development of the telehealth system to fulfill the necessity of delivering an efficient and cost-effective remote healthcare services. Moreover, the ageing of the global population and the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic are creating a rapid rise of demand for healthcare services. This includes those who are in need of remote monitoring for chronic conditions through rehabilitation exercises. Therefore, this paper presents a telehealth system using PoseNet for in-home rehabilitation, with built-in statistical computation for doctors to analyze the patient’s recovery status. This system enables patients to perform rehabilitation exercises at home using an ordinary webcam. The PoseNet skeleton-tracking method is applied to detect and track the patients’ angular movements for both elbows and knees. By using this system, the measurement of the elbow and knee joint angles can be calculated and recorded while patients are performing rehabilitation exercises in front of the laptop webcam. After the patients complete their rehabilitation exercises, the skeleton results of four body parts will be generated. Based on the same actions performed by patients on selected days, the doctors can examine and evaluate the deviation rate of patients’ angular movements between different days to determine the recovery rate.

High-Quality Nursing Care for the Elderly in the Department of Otolaryngology.

ENT patients have different types of diseases and clinical symptoms, and generally, patients have a low level of understanding of their professional knowledge about their ENT diseases. In this paper, quality nursing interventions in otorhinolaryngology require nursing staff to implement relevant nursing interventions in the process of implementing relevant nursing care, which should be based on patients' needs, and guide patients to perform rehabilitation exercises according to their individual conditions, in addition to establishing continuous nursing interventions with patients at the time of discharge with the help of modern technology. By comparing the nursing satisfaction of patients in the observation group and the control group, it was found that the nursing satisfaction of patients in the observation group who received humanistic nursing was higher, and the difference was statistically significant compared with that of the control group (P < 0.05). The SCL-90 scale scores of patients in both groups were not significantly different on the day of admission as verified by t values, and the SCL-90 scale scores of patients in both groups changed to a certain extent after hospitalization. The difference between the two groups was verified by t value.

A hierarchical privacy-preserving IoT architecture for vision-based hand rehabilitation assessment.

The healthcare industry requires the integration of digital technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT), to their full potential, particularly during this challenging time and the recent outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in the disruptions in healthcare delivery, service operations, and shortage of healthcare personnel. However, every opportunity has barriers and bumps, and when it comes to IoT healthcare, data privacy is one of the main growing issues. Despite the recent advances in the development of IoT healthcare architectures, most of them are invasive for the data subjects. In this context, the broad applications of AI in the IoT domain have also been hindered by emerging strict legal and ethical requirements to protect individual privacy. Camera-based solutions that monitor human subjects in everyday settings, e.g., for Online Range of Motion (ROM) detection, are making this problem even worse. One actively practiced branch of such solutions is telerehabilitation, which provides remote solutions for the physically impaired to regain their strength and get back to their normal daily routines. The process usually involves transmitting video/images from the patient performing rehabilitation exercises and applying Machine Learning (ML) techniques to extract meaningful information to help therapists devise further treatment plans. Thereby, real-time measurement and assessment of rehabilitation exercises in a reliable, accurate, and Privacy-Preserving manner is imperative. To address the privacy issue of existing solutions, this paper proposes a holistic Privacy-Preserving (PP) hierarchical IoT solution that simultaneously addresses the utilization of AI-driven IoT and the demands for data protection. Furthermore, the efficiency of the proposed architecture is demonstrated by a novel machine learning-based system that allows immediate assessment and extraction of ROM as the critical information for analyzing the progress of patients.