A basic study on computer model and stimulation data generation for FES

This study aims to develop a practical model of paralyzed patients for simulating FES-induced motions and methods of generating stimulation data for the desired motion. In this report, 'paraplegics' and 'standing up from a chair' are chosen as the first object patient and motion, respectively. Previous FES model studies of other groups often ignored the difficulty of estimating the model parameters, which made them impractical in clinical application. We made the musculoskeletal model easier to be clinically applied by simplifying it to include only the parameters that can be presently estimated noninvasively. Then we generated the stimulation data for standing up without arm-assistance, by manual adjustment and also by the dynamic optimization. Results showed that the present system with the practical model parameters is useful.