A usability study on mobile EMG-guided wrist extension training in subacute stroke patients-MyoGuide.

BACKGROUND: Effective stroke rehabilitation requires high-dose, repetitive-task training, especially during the early recovery phase. However, the usability of upper-limb rehabilitation technology in acute and subacute stroke survivors remains relatively unexplored. In this study, we introduce subacute stroke survivors to MyoGuide, a mobile training platform that employs surface electromyography (sEMG)-guided neurofeedback training that specifically targets wrist extension. Notably, the study emphasizes evaluating the platform's usability within clinical contexts. METHODS: Seven subacute post-stroke patients (1 female, mean age 53.7 years, mean time post-stroke 58.9 days, mean duration per training session 48.9 min) and three therapists (one for eligibility screening, two for conducting training) participated in the study. Participants underwent ten days of supervised one-on-one wrist extension training with MyoGuide, which encompassed calibration, stability assessment, and dynamic tasks. All training records including the Level of Difficulty (LoD) and Stability Assessment Scores were recorded within the application. Usability was assessed through the System Usability Scale (SUS) and participants' willingness to continue home-based training was gauged through a self-developed survey post-training. Therapists also documented the daily performance of participants and the extent of support required. RESULTS: The usability analysis yielded positive results, with a median SUS score of 82.5. Compared to the first session, participants significantly improved their performance at the final session as indicated by both the Stability Assessment Scores (p = 0.010, mean = 229.43, CI = [25.74-433.11]) and the LoD (p < 0.001; mean: 45.43, CI: [25.56-65.29]). The rate of progression differed based on the initial impairment levels of the patient. After training, participants expressed a keen interest in continuing home-based training. However, they also acknowledged challenges related to independently using the Myo armband and software. CONCLUSIONS: This study introduces the MyoGuide training platform and demonstrates its usability in a clinical setting for stroke rehabilitation, with the assistance of a therapist. The findings support the potential of MyoGuide for wrist extension training in patients across a wide range of impairment levels. However, certain usability challenges, such as donning/doffing the armband and navigating the application, need to be addressed to enable independent MyoGuide training requiring only minimal supervision by a therapist.

Exploring the Feasibility of Computer Vision for Detecting Post-Stroke Compensatory Movements.

Compensatory movements are commonly observed post-stroke and can negatively affect long-term motor recovery. In this context, a system that monitors movement quality and provides feedback would be beneficial. In this study, we aimed to detect compensatory movements during seated reaching using a conventional tablet camera and an open-source markerless body pose tracking algorithm called MediaPipe [1]. We annotated compensatory movements of stroke patients per frame based on the comparison between the paretic and non-paretic arms. We trained a binary classification model using the XGBoost algorithm to detect compensatory movements, which showed an average accuracy of 0.92 (SD 0.07) in leave-one-trial-out cross-validation across four participants. Although we observed good model performance, we also encountered challenges such as missing landmarks and misalignment, when using MediaPipe Pose. This study highlights the feasibility of using near real-time compensatory movement detection with a simple camera system in stroke rehabilitation. More work is necessary to assess the generalizability of our approach across diverse groups of stroke survivors and fully implement near real-time compensatory movement detection on a mobile device.

Robust estimation of synchronized spontaneous otoacoustic emission via singular value decomposition and optimal shrinkage.

We investigate matrix signal processing techniques for estimating synchronized spontaneous otoacoustic emission (OAE) in noise. Responses to repeated clicks are first stored in a matrix, and singular value decomposition is either applied in the time domain or the frequency domain after constructing a Hankel matrix at every frequency. The singular values are subject to optimal shrinkage (OS) which maximizes the signal-to-noise ratio. Human OAE data were analyzed, and the Hankel matrix method outperforms the time-domain OS method in synchronized spontaneous otoacoustic emission estimation, but not in the estimation of transient-evoked otoacoustic emission. Reasons for the performance discrepancy are discussed.

Molecular cloning and characterization of orange-spotted grouper (Epinephelus coioides) CXC chemokine ligand 12.

Chemokines are a family of soluble peptides that can recruit a wide range of immune cells to sites of infection and disease. The CXCL12 is a chemokine that binds to its cognate receptor CXCR4 and thus involved in multiple physiological and pathophysiological processes. In this study, we cloned and characterized CXCL12 from Epinephelus coioides (osgCXCL12). We found that the open reading frame of osgCXCL12 consists of 98 amino acid residues with the small cytokine C-X-C domain located between residues 29 and 87. Higher expression levels for osgCXCL12 were detected at the kitting stage, compared with the prolarva and larva shape stages. The expression patterns revealed that osgCXCL12 may play a key role in early grouper development. We detected mRNA transcripts for osgCXCL12 in healthy tissues and found the highest osgCXCL12 expression in the head kidney. Furthermore, a time-course analysis revealed significantly increased osgCXCL12 and osgCXCR4 expression levels after the nervous necrosis virus (NNV) challenge. In addition, expression of osgCXCL12 was affected by injection with microbial mimics [LPS and poly(I:C)]. These results suggest that osgCXCL12 is associated with inflammatory and developmental processes in the grouper.