An Instrumented Glove for Improving Spasticity Assessment

Abstract

An instrumented glove worn by caregivers that can augment subjective assessments of spasticity with an objective, repeatable metric with reduced inter- and intra- rater variability and improved resolution over existing standards is highly desirable. We present the design and preliminary results of such a system using commercial, off the shelf (COTS) components. The glove includes spatially-resolved, force-dependent resistive sensor elements and an inertial measurement unit. We developed a mock patient that is equipped with a mechanism to adjust the arm stiffness, a load-cell and a potentiometer to measure the work done to move the arm. The mock patient provides ground truth to validate the proposed concept. We report the power measured by the sensors in the mock patient to move the arm and the power estimated by the glove in moving the arm and show Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.64. We observe that raw sensor data and instrumentation errors contributed to significant outliers in these experiments. Initial assessments by clinician show promise of the proposed approach to improve spasticity assessment. Future work includes improvements to instrumentation and further clinical evaluations.