Scientists have been exploring the use of AI in a variety of fields, including medicine. A particular group of researchers has been exploring the use of AI to develop wearables that will help brain injury patients to recover their motor functions.
Scientists from the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital have been conducting a study through which they have been researching on how to tap into AI to improve the recovery process for brain injury patients. The goal is to develop wearable sensors that can assist in rehabilitation interventions that will help brain patients to regain their motor functions.
The study is titled “Enabling Precision Rehabilitation Interventions Using Wearable Sensors and Machine Learning to Track Motor Recovery” and it was recently published in a journal called Nature Digital Medicine. The researchers found that the technology provides a highly accurate way of monitoring the recovery of motor functions in brain injury patients.
“By providing clinicians precise data will enable them to design more effective interventions to improve the care we deliver,” stated Dr. Paolo Bonato, a senior author of the study and head of the Spaulding Motion Analysis Lab.
Using the AI-powered wearables to create a scale that shows how the motor functions are affected
Clinical studies have so far demonstrated significant gains in some of the patients participating in the study. The findings are proof that the right tools coupled with AI can be used to achieve better outcomes for patient-specific interventions. The research paper published in the Nature journal proposes the use of AI algorithms that can provide clinical score estimates using data collected by the wearable sensors.
The study proved that the scores generated from the data collected by the wearable sensors can be used to achieve highly accurate clinical score estimates. The researchers used the Fugl-Meyer Assessment (FMA) to determine the extent of motor impairment in the upper limbs. They also used the Functional Ability Scale (FAS) to come up with a scale that would show how much the brain damage affects the quality of movement. Accelerometer data used to make the scale was collected using the AI-powered wearables.
