An Identification Method for Upper Limb Spasticity Based on IDATC in Rehabilitation Training: A Preliminary Study

During rehabilitation training, real-time monitoring and accurate identification of whether spasticity is occurring at the moment are crucial. This serves as the prerequisite for rehabilitation devices or robots to promptly implement interventions to alleviate spasticity, ensure patient safety, and ensure therapeutic efficacy. However, research on the real-time identification of the moment when the spasticity occurs by rehabilitation robots during training remains limited. In this paper, through clinical manifestations of spasticity and theoretical analysis, an index based on the divergence of acceleration and external torque changes (IDATC) and an IDATC-based method for identifying spasticity onset are proposed. A combined experiment was conducted to collect the kinematic, interaction force, and electromyography (EMG) data of stroke patients during spasticity provocation. The proposed spasticity identification method was validated using upper limb spasticity data collected from stroke patients. Preliminary results of the experiment demonstrate that the negative peak of the IDATC is highly consistent with the EMG peak of the corresponding spastic muscle, so it has potential to identify spasticity onset using the proposed IDATC-based spasticity identification method. Furthermore, provided that the threshold is appropriately selected, the proposed IDATC-based method may achieve an exceptionally high identification F1 score.