Development of Rehabilitation System for Patient with Postural Control Disorder

- Preliminary Study about Experimental Method for Availability of the System -

Abstract

In order to support the rehabilitation of postural control disorders such as Parkinson 's disease (PD), novel rehabilitation equipment has developed, based on the hypothesis that sinusoidal oscillation (liner and rotary motion) of a platform (seat) in the horizontal plane induces response of the patient's postural control. Then, we examined the evaluation method for availability of this rehabilitation equipment. First, a drive unit of the platform used as the core of this system which could generate sinusoidal oscillation in its platform was developed, and an experimental system incorporating it was built. In this experiment, we compared PD patients with normal subjects. The motion of the trunk of the subject sitting on the equipment platform, subjected to sinusoidal oscillation, was measured by an accelerometer. Result, we found that normal subjects could absorb a perturbation of the trunk by keeping it in antiphase to the platform motion actively. In PD patients, the tendencies which the trunk motions to become larger than platform motion at in–phase were found. Moreover, we analyzed the postural reflex of PD patients under right–and–left liner motion tried before and after rotary motion using video tracking method. Consequently, the inclination of the trunk of “Pisa sign” which had appeared in the liner motion before rotary motion decreased slightly in the liner motion after rotary motion.