EMG Biofeedback Based VR System for Hand Rotation and Grasping Rehabilitation

Individuals who have upper limb movement problems include people with cerebral palsy (CP) and stroke victims. Both these conditions lead to difficulties in daily activities such as reaching, grasping etc. Virtual reality (VR), which could provide a repetitive multimodal task-oriented rehabilitation environment for patients to undertake self-training in safety, is considered to be a suitable tool for medical health rehabilitation. Using electromyography (EMG) biofeedback in rehabilitation could provide patients with opportunities to improve the ability by assessing their muscle activity response and learning self-control of movement during specific training tasks. This paper presents a study on developing EMG as an important interactive tool in a VR based system for hand rotation and grasping motion rehabilitation. The input interface includes an EMG system and a real-time magnetic motion tracking system, and the output interface is a PC monitor. The developed EMG biofeedback based VR system enables the user to interact with virtual objects in real-time with multiform feedback. Ten healthy subjects participated in the preliminary task evaluation test, and the results suggest that the specified skills have improved during training. The beneficial effects of the developed system indicate the potential values for further clinical application.