Measurement of physical quantities in upper-limb tele-rehabilitation.

A total of 50 patients (affected by traumatic brain injury, stroke or multiple sclerosis) were treated for one month using a rehabilitation protocol. Rehabilitation could be monitored using a Portable Unit (PU) which could be installed in a patient's home allowing the measurement of kinetic and kinematic variables during exercise. In a preliminary analysis, the variables related to four rehabilitation exercises were examined for two patients at baseline and at the end of the one-month treatment. The exercises involved movement of checkers, a pencil, a jar and a key. The results suggest that, even if the overall duration of exercise execution is an important aspect of the rehabilitation process, other variables acquired by the PU might deliver useful information for assessing the patient's status. In order to integrate such variables into the assessment process, further studies are needed to investigate their eventual correlation with traditional rehabilitation scales and variables.