Upper Limb Action Identification Based on Physiological Signals and Its Application in Limb Rehabilitation Training

Abstract

Upper limb motor dysfunction brings huge pain and burden to patients with brain trauma, stroke, and cerebral palsy, as well as their relatives. Physiological signals are closely related to the recovery of patients with limb dysfunction. The joint analysis of two key physiological signals, namely, surface electromyographic (sEMG) signal and acceleration signal, enables the scientific and effective evaluation of upper limb rehabilitation. However, the existing indices of upper limb rehabilitation are incomplete, and the current evaluation approaches are not sufficiently objective or quantifiable. To solve the problems, this paper explores upper limb action identification based on physiological signals, and tries to apply the approach to limb rehabilitation training. Specifically, the upper limb action features during limb rehabilitation training were extracted and identified by time-domain feature method, frequency-domain feature method, time-frequency domain feature method, and entropy feature method. Then, the evaluation flow of upper limb rehabilitation, plus the relevant evaluation indices, were given. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed composite feature identification of upper limb actions, and the proposed evaluation method for limb rehabilitation.