Method And Apparatus Of Robot-assisted Training Combined With Electro-acupuncture For Upper Limb Rehabilitation In Hemiplegia

Stimulation treatment plays an important role, even though it isn't the principal component of post-stroke hemiplegic rehabilitation. Acupuncture is a familiar stimulation method in Traditional Chinese Medical (TCM). Stimulation of TCM combined with other therapies may provide more efficient and clinical effects for rehabilitation. Therefore, developing of comprehensive therapy has very important theoretical and clinical value. Current research of rehabilitation robot has reached certain levels of achievement, but still can't meet the needs of comprehensive therapy. To realize combination therapy of TCM and modern rehabilitation, the existing rehabilitation robot had been improved. The main works in this study include:1. Combining transcutaneous electrical acupuncture stimulation (TEAS) with upper limb voluntary trajectory tracking tasks (TTT) during robot-assisted rehabilitation training. Embedding TEAS equipment in rehabilitation robot workstation, stimulation model can be determined by motion stage of limb. Altering TEAS control by robot system had been realized.2. To verify the different between acupuncture, electro-acupuncture and TEAS, clinical trials had been conducted. One healthy male human received robot-assisted TTT and TENS simultaneously. During the experiment, surface electromyography (sEMG) had been collecting and evaluated. The results indicated that acupuncture and electro-acupuncture carry different influence on sEMG, yet no significant different had found between electro-acupuncture and TEAS. According to the result, transcutaneous electrical stimulation can replace the electro-acupuncture.3. To investigate the influence of sustaining TEAS during robot-assisted TTT, four healthy male human who enlisted as volunteer for trials received robot-assisted TTT combined with sustaining TENS. The sEMG of upper limb muscle were recorded and the mean frequency (MNF) of sEMG which calculated by Hilbert-Huang Transform (HHT) were evaluated. The results indicated that sustaining TEAS provide influence on sEMG during robot-assisted TTT. Based on the healthy subjects experiment, clinical trial had been conducted. 8 post-stroke hemiplegic patients (Brunnstrom 3～5) were recruited to received robot-assisted TTT combined with altering TENS. The results illustrate that altering TEAS determined by motion stage of limb can excite more muscle than sustaining TEAS. Because of increasing excitative effect on triceps, it may suitable for cure of spastic Hemiplegia.