Mirror Therapy-Based Hand Rehabilitation

Our hands are critical, complex, and crucial human body parts with many functions. The loss of human hand function results in a severe compromise on the ability to feed and care for oneself and limits one's work, social, and family life. Hands are often prone to injuries since it is a primary means of interacting with the world. Recovery of the normal functioning of the hand after stroke, hand injuries, and hand surgeries is only possible by proper and continuous rehabilitation. Usually, patients undergoing hand rehabilitation have to visit the rehabilitation center to attend their sessions regularly. And thus, transportation becomes a challenge. Also, if home exercises are given, the patients fear doing the exercises due to pain and lack of motivation. Another challenge is that the physiotherapist does not receive feedback on whether the patients' given home exercises were correctly done. The proposed mirror therapy-based hand rehabilitation of fingers with a feedback mechanism consists of a transmitter and receiver exoskeleton. The designed transmitter hand exoskeleton initiates the hand movements, and these signals are picked up and transmitted to the receiver hand exoskeleton for the corresponding movement. In our proposed design, the focus is given to mobilizing the Metacarpophalangeal (MCP) and Proximal Interphalangeal (PIP) joints of all fingers. With the help of the proposed system, the patient can perform the prescribed exercises in their comfort at their homes without the help of a bystander. The proposed system is validated by recording Electromyography (EMG) signals and grip force measurements and comparing the values obtained for a normal hand and the hand with an exoskeleton.