UT Researchers Study Robotic Device for Stroke Survivor Therapy
HOUSTON—(Jan. 3, 2008)—As he stares at the computer screen, his brow furrowed in concentration while his right hand works the joystick, you might think stroke survivor Mike Dixon, 64, was playing a video game.
UT-Houston study coordinator Nuray Yozbatiran works
with stroke survivor Mike Dixon at Memorial Hermann
|TIRR as he uses a new robotic device to strengthen
his right hand and arm.
But he’s actually part of an advanced study by researchers in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston, who are looking at a robotic joystick designed by engineers at Rice University to see if it can help stroke survivors regain strength and dexterity in their affected hand.
The $150,000, 18-month study, which will enroll 16 patients at Memorial Hermann | TIRR, is funded by Mission Connect, an initiative created by the TIRR Foundation to finance research. The study, which begins this month, comes on the heels of a small, successful pilot study that ended a year ago.
“We are combining constraint induced therapy, where patients wear a mitt on their unaffected hand, with a small robotic device from Rice,” said the study’s principal investigator, Corwin Boake, Ph.D., associate professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at the medical school. “The device works like a joystick but the robotics makes it react to what you do.”
In the exercise, the patient tries to hit a large dot on the screen with another dot. The PC-based system can be set to assist the patient, let the patient do it with no help, or to push against the patient’s pressure.
“It can take months of physical therapy for stroke patients to regain the use of their limbs,” said system architect Marcia O’Malley, Ph.D., director of Rice’s Mechatronics and Haptic Interfaces Laboratory. “We hope to refine our system to allow patients to recover faster and to allow therapists to more precisely monitor patients’ recovery.”
Boake said constraint therapy, which has been proven beneficial for stroke survivors – even years after their stroke – has opened new doors.
“People used to think that several months after a stroke, any improvements were maxed out,” he said. “Constraint therapy has broken through that and there’s a whole new potential for people years after stroke. But it does take a lot of effort. That’s why robotics is important. They don’t replace the therapist, but they assist the therapist.”
This therapeutic device is being developed by Rice
University’s Mechatronics and Haptic Interfaces
Laboratory. “It works like a joystick but the robotics
makes it react to what you do,” says UT-Houston's
Dr. Corwin Boake.
Boake hopes that one day in the future, therapists would be able to send the robotic joystick home with the patient to continue therapy.
Patients with weakness affecting one side and some movement in the affected hand are eligible to participate in the study (call 713-797-7589). The therapy will be given three times a week for four weeks at Memorial Hermann | TIRR.
Boake said the investigators will also add imaging to the study, scanning the brains of participants before and after the therapy to see if there are any changes.
“We have highly motivated patients like Mr. Dixon who are pioneers and should be proud of breaking down limits,” Boake said. “When I first got involved in stroke therapy, there was this sense of complacency where patients were told to deal with it, to accept it. Now it’s a sense of adventure because we know a lot of things are possible. This is an exciting time in rehabilitation. We don’t even know what the limits are anymore.”
Dixon was one of the four patients in the pilot program who has returned for more therapy to help study coordinator and postdoctoral fellow Nuray Yozbatiran, Ph.D., ramp up for the next study.
“I was anxious to participate for myself and for others like me,” said Dixon, who was left with weakness on his right side after he suffered his stroke in 2004. “I want to help from that standpoint.”