Investigator: H.F. Machiel Van der Loos, PhD Project Staff: Peter S. Lum, PhD and Peggy Shor, BS OTR Project Category: Stroke - 2000 Introduction: The MIME Project (VA Rehabilitation Service Grant E1663R) has shown the effectiveness of multi-axis robot-based therapy to return function to the upper limb of persons who have become hemiplegic as a result of a stroke. However, the robot is a general-use industrial manipulator, not a device for placement in the clinic for operation by non-technical professionals. To respond to the need for a clinical-use device, we have formed a collaboration with Richard Mahoney, PhD, Director of the Rehabilitation Technology Division of Applied Resources Corp. (ARC), Fairfield, NJ. ARC received a Phase-1 SBIR grant from NIH to pursue this development. We have received a subcontract to this SBIR grant for design consulting, clinical testing and validation of the design. Findings: ARC developed a one-degree-of-freedom exercise device that is reconfigurable to allow many of the same types of trajectories as the original MIME system. The MIME Project team performed testing with 4 control subjects and 4 hemiplegic stroke subjects. Both groups were tested on the 6-axis MIME robot as well as the ARC-MIME prototype, which had been programmed with the same force-based trajectory control and data collection software as the MIME robot. Data showed highly similar results in the 4 operating modes: passive, active-assisted, active-constrained and master-slave. Based on these encouraging results, ARC has submitted an SBIR Phase-2 grant proposal to NIH for further development and commercialization. Our group will be performing additional testing if that grant is funded. Clinical Relevance: The ultimate goal of this project is to transfer VA clinical expertise to ARC for the purpose of putting a clinical device on the market with established clinical effectiveness. Together with the results of the MIME Project, this research and development is expected to result in a system with proven rehabilitative effectiveness. Successful development of the device as a product therefore has the potential for widespread use by veterans in VA stroke clinics for early intervention therapy as well as in out-patient exercise programs for chronic stroke survivors. Funding Source: Applied Resources Corporation |
