Muscle Synergistic Pattern and Kinematic Sensor Data Analysis During Upper-Limb Reaching in Stroke Patients

Quantitative and efficient measurement of motor impairment level is of vital importance in stroke rehabilitation. This paper investigates the muscle synergistic patterns and kinematic sensor data of upper limb reaching in stroke patients with different impairment level. Thirty-three stroke patients and nineteen healthy age-matched subjects serving as the control group were asked to do voluntary upward reaching. Inertial sensors and surface electromyography (sEMG) sensors were attached to subjects’ upper limb to obtain the real-time joint angle through segment position by the inertial sensory data fusion and extract synergistic patterns from sEMG data by applying principal components analysis at the same time. The experimental results show that stroke patients not only have abnormal range of shoulder joint motion, which was correlated with the degree of clinical impairment level; but also have different muscle synergistic patterns at different impairment level, which can be used as a quantitative measurement of functional recovery status.