Functional Electrical Stimulation Control in Paraplegia

"According to statistics from charities such as Every Eight Hours and Spinal Research, there are an estimated 40,000 spinal cord injured people in the UK and a new person is injured every eight hours. Many primary causes of death are now no longer direct results of spinal cord injury but are conditions linked to age and inactivity. Inactivity and reduced mobility result in reduced bone mass density and osteoporosis of the lower limbs. This means that there are long-term demands on medical support; in particular, treatment of osteoporotic bone fractures often results in lengthy spells in hospital for individuals with spinal cord injury. It is therefore important to minimize the effect of osteoporosis after spinal cord injury; this project aims to create a real-time control system that can control the movement of paraplegic individuals through a muscle stimulating device (FES) and enable exercising of the lower limbs with the goal of regaining lost bone mass density and improving their quality of life.
This control system will be used in tandem with existing exercising facilities developed in the University of Reading will have direct output to existing ongoing research efforts . The successful PhD candidate will be working alongside prof. Holderbaum’s interdisciplinary research team and will take advantage of the established collaboration with researchers from other institutes, such as the Coventry University and UCL.

In more detail, the control system developed as part of the project will receive and integrate sensory input from a suite of recording devices of human locomotion (such as camera systems (e.g. Xbox Kinect, Vicon, Qualisys), body position sensors (e.g. Xsens, Perception Neuron), and force sensors/load cells). The output of the control system that will drive the muscle contractions must be optimised to produce smooth transition of poses so that the resulting body motion is natural, effortless, and safe for the participants. Initially, the control system will be applied on a biomechanical human simulation for precise tuning and investigation of a range of advance control methodologies (e.g. adaptive and intelligent control). Pre-existing models, and data gathered as part of the current FES project will be used to provide a simulation platform for high accuracy results of the control design. The control will also be linked to a virtual exercising platform, which provides biofeedback based on the performance of the participants during exercises.
The final control system will then be used in ongoing human paraplegic studies for standing and mobilising the paraplegic participant; with the aim to identify an exercise routine that can increase the bone mass density by activating bone regeneration processes in the body due to force loading.

To summarise, this project proposes an intelligent control system to provide real-time control of the lower body movement of individuals with paraplegia during standing exercises. Application of this system in paralysed participants will result in bone-mass density increase and positively impact the quality of health of people with paraplegia.
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