Proprioceptive Sonomyographic Control: A novel method for intuitive and proportional control of multiple degrees-of-freedom for individuals with upper extremity limb loss.
Citation: Scientific Reports. 9(1):9499, 2019 Jul 01.PMID: 31263115Institution: MedStar National Rehabilitation NetworkForm of publication: Journal ArticleMedline article type(s): Journal ArticleSubject headings: IN PROCESS -- NOT YET INDEXEDYear: 2019ISSN:- 2045-2322
Item type | Current library | Collection | Call number | Status | Date due | Barcode |
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Journal Article | MedStar Authors Catalog | Article | 31263115 | Available | 31263115 |
Technological advances in multi-articulated prosthetic hands have outpaced the development of methods to intuitively control these devices. In fact, prosthetic users often cite "difficulty of use" as a key contributing factor for abandoning their prostheses. To overcome the limitations of the currently pervasive myoelectric control strategies, namely unintuitive proportional control of multiple degrees-of-freedom, we propose a novel approach: proprioceptive sonomyographic control. Unlike myoelectric control strategies which measure electrical activation of muscles and use the extracted signals to determine the velocity of an end-effector; our sonomyography-based strategy measures mechanical muscle deformation directly with ultrasound and uses the extracted signals to proportionally control the position of an end-effector. Therefore, our sonomyography-based control is congruent with a prosthetic user's innate proprioception of muscle deformation in the residual limb. In this work, we evaluated proprioceptive sonomyographic control with 5 prosthetic users and 5 able-bodied participants in a virtual target achievement and holding task for 5 different hand motions. We observed that with limited training, the performance of prosthetic users was comparable to that of able-bodied participants and thus conclude that proprioceptive sonomyographic control is a robust and intuitive prosthetic control strategy.
English