INTRODUCTION Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) has systemic repercussions that can lead to peripheral muscle dysfunction. Muscle atrophy reduces aerobic capacity, greatly limiting activities of daily living and quality of life. Pulmonary rehabilitation is the gold standard treatment for these patients, however, patients may not be able to reach sufficient training intensities for ben...

This paper reviews the current state of the art and identifies the major challenges facing the future development and clinical application of neuroprostheses to provide limb movement. It gives insight into the current status of functional electrical stimulation (FES) for motor control, identifies problems, and proposes possible directions of development in cervical cord injury, thoracic spinal ...

In recent years, our understanding of the spinal cord's role in movement control has been greatly advanced. Research suggests that body weight support (BWS) walking and functional electrical stimulation (FES), techniques that are used by physical therapists, have potential to improve walking function in individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI), perhaps long after the stage of spontaneous recov...

The present study reports on the use of an EEG-based asynchronous (uncued, user-driven) brain-computer interface (BCI) for the control of functional electrical stimulation (FES). By the application of FES, noninvasive restoration of hand grasp function in a tetraplegic patient was achieved. The patient was able to induce bursts of beta oscillations by imagination of foot movement. These beta os...

Mind-Machine Interface (MMI) is a newly surfaced term in the field of control engineering and rehabilitation systems. This technique, coupled with the existing functional electrical stimulation (FES) systems, can be very beneficial for effective rehabilitation of disabled patients. This paper presents a conceptual framework for the development of MMI based FES systems for therapeutic aid and fu...

The Gait Coordination Protocol (GCP) was successful in producing clinically and statistically significant gains in impairment, function, and life-role participation for those in the chronic phase after stroke who had exhibited persistent moderate to severe gait deficits [1–3]. The GCP was initially developed to test response to functional electrical stimulation (FES); notably, the GCP produced ...

The objective of this study is to construct realistic biomechanical models of neuromuscular system for studying sensorimotor control and for development of control system for functional electrical stimulation (FES). In this paper, an elbow model with flextion/extension and supination/pronation degrees of freedom is described. Muscles are defined so that their moment arms match those of experime...

One of the current trends in the rehabilitation of lower limb neuromuscular disabilities is to use fully or partially implantable systems based on Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES). In this paper, the conceptual design of a possible fully or partially implantable system with submillimiter size is presented. The system presents increased flexibility, adaptability and comfortability. Prelim...

Functional electrical stimulation (FES) involves artificial activation of muscles with implanted electrodes to restore motor function in paralyzed individuals. The range of motor behaviors that can be generated by FES, however, is limited to a small set of preprogrammed movements such as hand grasp and release. A broader range of movements has not been implemented because of the substantial dif...

Discomfort experienced during surface functional electrical stimulation (FES) is thought to be partly a result of localized high current density in the skin underneath the stimulating electrode. This article describes a finite element (FE) model to predict skin current density distribution in the region of the electrode during stimulation and its application to the identification of electrode p...