Quantitative Evaluation of Rehabilitation Therapy Based on a Two-Finger Force Measurement System

Abstract This paper describes the evaluation of the effectiveness of rehabilitation therapy for patients with finger paralysis based ona two-finger force measurement system (TFFMS). The paralyzed fingers can be recovered through rehabilitation therapies. Thefinger pressing force of the patients can be measured utilizing the TFFMS previously developed by the author [7]. The TFFMS,however, has not been fully adopted as a standard method for evaluating the therapy owing to the lack of a standard protocol.The pressing force of healthy volunteers and patients is analyzed with the TFFMS to explore the feasibility of the TFFMS asan evaluation device. The test confirms that the established standard protocol is useful to quantitatively assess the progress offinger rehabilitation therapy.Keywords: Rehabilitation, Two-finger force measurement system (TFFMS), Finger pressing force, Finger rehabilitation 1. INTRODUCTION The number of patients with finger paralysis, which is acondition where the patients are unable to use their fingers, hasgreatly increased over the recent times. Use of their fingers canbe recovered with rehabilitative training; rehabilitation can beassessed by patients being able to pull a hook grasp a cylindricalobject, or a plate. At present, most hospitals use cylindricalobjects, hooks, plates, and plate objects that cannot measure theforces exerted by the patients when grasping. Therefore, doctorscan only roughly estimate the progress of rehabilitation bytouching and watching the grasping and pulling actions ofpatients’ fingers. The developed finger force-measuring system [1-7] with a forcesensor can measure the forces applied by fingers. This fingerforce-measuring system, however, has not been fully adopted as astandard method for evaluating therapy owing to the lack of astandard protocol.In this paper, a characteristics test for the finger pressingforces of healthy individuals were performed utilizing a two-finger force measurement system (TFFMS) [7], and anevaluation standard of the rehabilitation therapy for patients’ twofingers (thumb and forefinger) was created by using the results.In addition, the pressing force of patients’ finger was measuredusing the TFFMS, and the results were applied to the evaluationof rehabilitation therapy.