BiGRA: A preliminary bilateral hand grip coordination rehabilitation using home-based evaluation system for stroke patients

Motor impairment is common following stroke. Diminished strength and coordination contribute to reduced ability to perform activities of daily living. The existing healthcare models focus on delivering rehabilitation during the first few months following stroke. Yet, to regain motor control to the greatest degree, rehabilitation should continue across the lifespan. Currently, individuals with stroke are responsible for self-managing their rehabilitation once therapist guided rehabilitation has concluded. Individuals with stroke are frequently given a written home exercise program to help guide their home rehabilitation, but poor compliance demonstrates a better approach is necessary. In this study, we propose BiGRA, a novel system to more effectively facilitate in-home bilateral rehabilitation. This system holds merits in: (1) An end-to-end task-oriented system for bilateral grip control which emphasizes the modulation of grip coordination between hands; and (2) Innovative metrics framework to quantitatively analyze the motor control performance. The evaluation shows that BiGRA can objectively measure the patients' task performance and is a promising assessment tool for stroke rehabilitation.