Quantitative Evaluation of Performance during Robot-assisted Treatment.

INTRODUCTION This article is part of the Focus Theme of Methods of Information in Medicine on "Methodologies, Models and Algorithms for Patients Rehabilitation". OBJECTIVES The great potential of robots in extracting quantitative and meaningful data is not always exploited in clinical practice. The aim of the present work is to describe a simple parameter to assess the performance of subjects during upper limb robotic training exploiting data automatically recorded by the robot, with no additional effort for patients and clinicians. METHODS Fourteen children affected by cerebral palsy (CP) performed a training with Armeo®Spring. Each session was evaluated with P, a simple parameter that depends on the overall performance recorded, and median and interquartile values were computed to perform a group analysis. RESULTS Median (interquartile) values of P significantly increased from 0.27 (0.21) at T0 to 0.55 (0.27) at T1 . This improvement was functionally validated by a significant increase of the Melbourne Assessment of Unilateral Upper Limb Function. CONCLUSIONS The parameter described here was able to show variations in performance over time and enabled a quantitative evaluation of motion abilities in a way that is reliable with respect to a well-known clinical scale.