Technical validation of an integrated robotic hand rehabilitation device: finger independent movement, EMG control, and EEG-based biofeedback

The objective of this work was to design and experiment a robotic hand rehabilitation device integrated with a wireless EEG system, going towards patient active participation maximization during the exercise. This has been done through i) hand movement actively triggered by patients muscular activity as revealed by electromyographic signals (i.e., a target hand movement for the rehabilitation session is defined, the patient is required to start the movement and only when the muscular activity overcomes a predefined threshold, the patient-initiated movement is supported); ii) an EEG-based biofeedback implemented to make the user aware of his/her level of engagement (i.e., brain rhythms power ratio Beta/Alpha). The designed system is composed by the Gloreha hand rehabilitation glove, a device for electromyographic signals recording, and a wireless EEG headset. A strong multidisciplinary approach was the base to reach this goal, which is the fruitful background of the Think and Go project. Within this project, research institutes (Politecnico di Milano), clinical centers (INRCA-IRCCS), and companies (ab medica s.p.a., Idrogent, SXT) have worked together throughout the development of the integrated robotic hand rehabilitation device. The integrated device has been tested on a small pilot group of healthy volunteers. All the users were able to calibrate and correctly use the system, and they reported that the system was more challenging to be used with respect to the standard passive hand mobilization session, and required more attention and involvement. The results obtained during the preliminary tests are encouraging, and demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach.