Research And Development Of An Intelligent Glove For The Assessment Of Hand Function In Stroke Patients

At present,the stroke patients in our country are increasing day by day.hemiplegia and hand dysfunction always occur in these patients.In clinical treatment,prompt and accurate assessment of the patient's hand function status can help doctors to develop a reasonable rehabilitation training program,which can promote the recovery of patients' hand function.Now,the assessment of the patient's hand function is mainly based on Fugl-Meyer Index and so on.The stroke patients are requested to do the specially action.The rate are given by doctor for the patient's action.This method is tedious,time-consuming and subjective.With the development of science and technology,textiles are becoming more and more intelligent at present.Combinating flexible sensors and textiles,the evaluation function of sensors and the comfort of textiles can be made full use of.It can provide heip for the rehabilitation of stroke patients' hand function.After communicating with rehabilitation physicians and stroke patients,the paper attempts to develop an intelligent glove to evaluating hand function of stroke patients,including evaluation of thumb opposition and flexural function of fingers and wrist.The main contents of this paper are as follows:(1)In order to get well electrical conductivity and weaving ability,3 kinds of silverplated filament are selected to knit sensors.And then their tensile properties,silver conten t,electrical conductivity and oxidation resistance are tested.(2)Using silver-plated filament as the inlay thread and polyester high elastic filament as knitted plain,the weft inlay stitch sensor is knitted.Then the paper design 9 kinds of different the weft inlay stitch sensor to analysis what influence the sickness of silver-plated filament,length of weft inlay and number of rows in weft inlay have on the sensors' function such as linearity,sensitivity and repeatability.By experiment the paper find that the function of this weft inlay stitch sensor is not so good and shouldn't be knitted into the gloves as the final sensor.(3)In order to improve the performance of the sensor,the structure and yarn of the sensor are changed.The paper used silver-plated filament as plating sticth and design 9 kinds of different the plating sticth stitch sensor to analysis what influence the sickness of silver-plated filament,length of plating sticth and number of rows in plating sticth have on the sensors' function such as linearity,sensitivity and repeatability.Experimental results show that the plating sticth sensor has better performance than the weft inlay stitch sensor.Therefore,the paper chose the plating sticth sensor to be knitted into the gloves.(4)The paper design a open half palm glove which is more beneficial for the stroke patients to wear.and use 14 pin Stoll ADF-3 computerized flat knitting machine to weave it.Using E14 Stoll ADF-3 computerized flat knitting machine,the sensor and glove are combined by whole garment method.(5)After designing circuit,the paper connect the plating sticth sensor with wires,bulbs,power supply.When the stroke patient's thumbs touching other fingers,the corresponding bulb glows.Using glow of the blub,we can judge whether the stroke patient's thumbs can touch other fingers.Connecting the wires and the plating sticth sensor on the glove,we can test the stroke patient's hand winding by use the digital multimeter to collect the sensor's resistance data.We can also test their hand's flexing speed through the frequency of the resistance-time curve.