Design and development of an instrumented glove for hand rehabilitation in children suffering from cerebral palsy: a digital manufacturing approach

Cerebral palsy in infancy represents one of the major causes of permanent motor deficit in the upper limb movements. An early diagnosis and timely rehabilitation therapy would facilitate the partial or total recovery of the physiological movement range. Unfortunately, currently available technological solutions for rehabilitation and assessment of upper limb are not suited for children younger than 5 years of age. The advancements in manufacturing technologies have made possible the fabrication of highly accurate custom physical models of patient anatomy and, more recently, patient specific implants. This work investigates the possibility to develop a workflow based on digital manufacturing technologies to design parametric solutions for rehabilitation and motor assessment in children younger than 5 years of age. In details, this work presents the development of an instrumented glove for the assessment of thumb therapy in children aged between 4 and 5 years suffering from the “thumb in the palm syndrome”.