Monitoring System for Home-Based Hand Rehabilitation

The paper proposes a solution for monitoring of cardiovascular parameters during home-based hand rehabilitation. The most important cause of long-term disability in Europe is cerebral vascular accident (CVA) or stroke. The effects of stroke can vanish after a short period or can remain for the rest of the life depending on therapeutic program. The system developed for this study is not only therapeutically devices that allow the movement of hand for physical exercises controlled by electromyography (EMG) but also record one or more biomedical parameters such as: electromyogram (EMG), electrocardiogram (ECG), pulse wave, heart rate (HR), temperature, respiration rate, non-invasive blood pressure (NIBP) or oxygen concentration in the blood (SpO2). These physiological parameters are selected according to the physician's prescription and the patient needs. In this paper it is presented an application that refers to the hand rehabilitation of post-stroke. It was observed the cardiovascular system status, analyzing the heart rate variability. During therapeutic procedure it was recorded ECG (1 lead) and pulse wave (using an ear lobe sensor). After that HRV was calculated for each signal. The results were used to determine the stress level induced by the rehabilitation program.