Emotional State Measurement Trial (EMOPROEXE): A Protocol for Promoting Exercise in Adults and Children with Cerebral Palsy.

BACKGROUND: The protocol described in this paper is part of a research project coordinated between three Spanish universities, where a technology aimed at improving the quality of life of people with cerebral palsy will be developed. Part of the proposed technology will consist of an interface and a series of applications to increase motivation for daily physical activity. The basis of these developments is the measurement of the emotional state of the subjects. METHODS: The experimental protocol is designed with two research objectives, on the one hand to identify the emotional state through physiological signals, and on the other to determine whether music can be a motivating factor to promote physical activity. It is specifically designed for subjects with cerebral palsy, taking into account the special characteristics of this population. These are people with whom it is difficult to use questionnaires to have a basis to contrast with the measured physiological signals, so measurements must be taken in carefully chosen daily-life situations. DISCUSSION: We hope our findings show which physiological parameters are the most robust to measure the emotional state and how to design rehabilitation and physical activity promotion routines that are motivating, in addition to being able to avoid risk factors during the performance of these routines. TRIAL REGISTRATION: NCT05621057.

Heartbeat detector from ECG and PPG signals based on wavelet transform and upper envelopes.

The analysis of cardiac activity is one of the most common elements for evaluating the state of a subject, either to control possible health risks, sports performance, stress levels, etc. This activity can be recorded using different techniques, with electrocardiogram and photoplethysmogram being the most common. Both techniques make significantly different waveforms, however the first derivative of the photoplethysmographic data produces a signal structurally similar to the electrocardiogram, so any technique focusing on detecting QRS complexes, and thus heartbeats in electrocardiogram, is potentially applicable to photoplethysmogram. In this paper, we develop a technique based on the wavelet transform and envelopes to detect heartbeats in both electrocardiogram and photoplethysmogram. The wavelet transform is used to enhance QRS complexes with respect to other signal elements, while the envelopes are used as an adaptive threshold to determine their temporal location. We compared our approach with three other techniques using electrocardiogram signals from the Physionet database and photoplethysmographic signals from the DEAP database. Our proposal showed better performances when compared to others. When the electrocardiographic signal was considered, the method had an accuracy greater than 99.94%, a true positive rate of 99.96%, and positive prediction value of 99.76%. When photoplethysmographic signals were investigated, an accuracy greater than 99.27%, a true positive rate of 99.98% and positive prediction value of 99.50% were obtained. These results indicate that our proposal can be adapted better to the recording technology.

A Study on Physical Exercise and General Mobility in People with Cerebral Palsy: Health through Costless Routines.

Sedentary behavior (SB) is a common problem that may produce health issues in people with cerebral palsy (CP). When added to a progressive reduction in motor functions over time, SB can lead to higher percentages of body fat, muscle stiffness and associated health issues in this population. Regular physical activity (RPA) may prevent the loss of motor skills and reduce health risks. In this work, we analyzed data collected from 40 people (20 children and teenagers, and 20 adults) who attend two specialist centers in Seville to obtain an up-to-date picture regarding the practice of RPA in people with CP. Roughly 60% of the participants showed mostly mid/severe mobility difficulties, while 38% also had communicative issues. Most of the participants performed light-intensity physical activity (PA) at least once or twice a week and, in the majority of cases, had a neutral or positive attitude to exercising. In the Asociación Sevillana de Parálisis Cerebral (ASPACE) sample test, the higher the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF), the higher the percentage of negative responses to doing exercise. Conversely, in the Centro Específico de Educación Especial Mercedes Sanromá (CEEEMS), people likes PA but slightly higher ratios of positive responses were found at Gross Motor Function Classification System (GMFCS) levels V and II, agreeing with the higher personal engagement of people at those levels. We have also performed a literature review regarding RPA in CP and the use of low-cost equipment. As a conclusion, we found that RPA produces enormous benefits for health and motor functions, whatever its intensity and duration. Costless activities such as walking, running or playing sports; exercises requiring low-cost equipment such as elastic bands, certain smartwatches or video-games; or therapies with animals, among many others, have all demonstrated their suitability for such a purpose.

Real-Time Processing Library for Open-Source Hardware Biomedical Sensors.

Applications involving data acquisition from sensors need samples at a preset frequency rate, the filtering out of noise and/or analysis of certain frequency components. We propose a novel software architecture based on open-software hardware platforms which allows programmers to create data streams from input channels and easily implement filters and frequency analysis objects. The performances of the different classes given in the size of memory allocated and execution time (number of clock cycles) were analyzed in the low-cost platform Arduino Genuino. In addition, 11 people took part in an experiment in which they had to implement several exercises and complete a usability test. Sampling rates under 250 Hz (typical for many biomedical applications) makes it feasible to implement filters, sliding windows and Fourier analysis, operating in real time. Participants rated software usability at 70.2 out of 100 and the ease of use when implementing several signal processing applications was rated at just over 4.4 out of 5. Participants showed their intention of using this software because it was percieved as useful and very easy to use. The performances of the library showed that it may be appropriate for implementing small biomedical real-time applications or for human movement monitoring, even in a simple open-source hardware device like Arduino Genuino. The general perception about this library is that it is easy to use and intuitive.

Characterizing Computer Access Using a One-Channel EEG Wireless Sensor.

This work studies the feasibility of using mental attention to access a computer. Brain activity was measured with an electrode placed at the Fp1 position and the reference on the left ear; seven normally developed people and three subjects with cerebral palsy (CP) took part in the experimentation. They were asked to keep their attention high and low for as long as possible during several trials. We recorded attention levels and power bands conveyed by the sensor, but only the first was used for feedback purposes. All of the information was statistically analyzed to find the most significant parameters and a classifier based on linear discriminant analysis (LDA) was also set up. In addition, 60% of the participants were potential users of this technology with an accuracy of over 70%. Including power bands in the classifier did not improve the accuracy in discriminating between the two attentional states. For most people, the best results were obtained by using only the attention indicator in classification. Tiredness was higher in the group with disabilities (2.7 in a scale of 3) than in the other (1.5 in the same scale); and modulating the attention to access a communication board requires that it does not contain many pictograms (between 4 and 7) on screen and has a scanning period of a relatively high t s c a n ≈ 10 s. The information transfer rate (ITR) is similar to the one obtained by other brain computer interfaces (BCI), like those based on sensorimotor rhythms (SMR) or slow cortical potentials (SCP), and makes it suitable as an eye-gaze independent BCI.