While attending University of Madras in India, assistant professor in the Department of Kinesiology Rajiv Ranganathan's grandfather suffered a stroke, leaving him debilitated.
After seeing the struggle of his grandfather's rehabilitation, Ranganathan dedicated himself to find better ways of helping rehabilitation among stroke patients.
Now Ranganathan uses modern forms of technology, such as motion capture cameras, to collect data for analysis. With collecting this data, he hopes doctors can see a more in-depth prognosis of the debilitating effects of a stroke, and will be able to better assess a rehabilitation program.
With how technology has evolved through the past 20 years, it can be used to better understand people's motor behavior, Ranganathan said.
"Now the time has come where we don't have to say range of motion is on a scale of one to five, we can say range of motion is 120 degrees," Ranganathan said. "That gives us a much better way of tracking progress."
“With the help of the computer system, we can build a virtual environment and it will let us learn more about human movement,” doctoral student Tzu-Hsiang Lin said.
A simple experiment used by Ranganathan involves a box filled with blocks. In one minute, participants have to transfer blocks on one side of the box, over a partition, and into the other side and the total number is recorded.
While performing this, motion capture can map out upper body joint functions, and force plates in the floor can measure posture control. If participants have limited arm movements and need to use their core or other forms of compensation, that data can be recorded.
“Now is the era of data, so with these kinds of devices, we can collect multiple joints at the same time,” Lin said.
This collection of quantitative data will provide doctors a way track patient progress. Since doctors only see patients ever so often, using technology to mark patient progress will help doctors better understand how effective their treatment is, an idea that 10 to 15 years ago might have not been feasible, Ranganathan said.
Other uses of technology Ranganathan uses in the lab includes a bimanual robot combined with a virtual reality system. Using this, a spring-like force can be applied to help determine the amount of force being used.
“I think independence is huge for everyone, no one wants to be dependent on anyone," kinesiology senior and lab assistant Julie Pieciak said. “If I can help someone reach the baseline where they were before or better, that is something I would like to do.”
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