Exercise devices – Having specific electrical feature – Monitors exercise parameter
Reexamination Certificate
1999-07-27
2002-07-02
Mulcahy, John (Department: 3764)
Exercise devices
Having specific electrical feature
Monitors exercise parameter
C482S009000, C600S505000, C463S036000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06413190
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates generally to rehabilitation therapy devices and methods. More specifically, the present invention relates to devices and methods utilizing body sensors coupled to computers to drive computer games and record body movements for rehabilitation therapy analysis. In particular, the present invention requires purposeful effort toward movement or actual body movement to play computer games in order to encourage performance of otherwise dull and repetitive rehabilitation therapy movements.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Each year thousands of individuals face the need to perform some type of rehabilitation therapy program such as physical therapy or occupational therapy. Health care professionals and consumers generally recognize that such rehabilitation therapy will significantly reduce the consequences of illness and injury, as well as promote health and increase the likelihood of greater and speedier recovery. Rehabilitation therapy is used by patients who have experienced impairments, disabilities, or handicaps. Rehabilitation therapy is also used to counter the effects of aging.
Traditionally, rehabilitation therapy for a patient involves diagnosing the impairment, disability, or handicap, evaluating the individual's capabilities and ambitions, establishing a rehabilitation program directed toward those goals, and performing the rehabilitation program. Two major tasks of successful rehabilitation therapy are overcoming the individual's lack of motivation and evaluating the individual's progress in the rehabilitation program.
For many people, rehabilitation programs last several weeks, months, and even years. Improvement is often so small and slow that it may not be perceived by either the individual or by the rehabilitation team members. The length of time required and the inconsequential, incremental pace of improvement cause many patients to lose motivation for participation in the rehabilitation program. Patients become discouraged when they cannot feel or see improvements in their capabilities. Members of the rehabilitation therapy team often spend a large amount of time working to increase the motivation of individuals to continue working on the rehabilitation program. The end result is less effective and less efficient rehabilitation.
During rehabilitation, patients are taught how to move correctly and are given exercises to diminish their movement impairments. To correctly learn movements and exercises, patients often require many repetitions of instructions from the therapists. However, the repetition of exercises by a patient under continuous supervision of a therapist is prohibitively costly. Therefore, patients must cooperate in their rehabilitation by practicing the movements and performing the exercises independently. A direct relationship between patient compliance with therapy and decreasing movement impairment has been demonstrated. Lack of motivation to continue with practice is detrimental to progress in a rehabilitation program. Successful rehabilitation depends not only on the patient's repetition of exercises and movements, but also requires that the exercises and movements be performed correctly.
Biofeedback is a treatment technique used with patients who have a loss of perception of some body function. Biofeedback monitors the body function for which the patient has lost perception and provides patients with some type of visual or auditory signal as evidence of a change in that body function. Biofeedback is used in rehabilitation therapy to provide patients with information as to when they have performed the exercise correctly.
Electromyographic (EMG) biofeedback has been successfully used during rehabilitation to help patients activate muscles and to re-educate patients in the use of their muscles. Patients have experienced marked improvement in muscle function following use of EMG biofeedback. Currently marketed EMG feedback systems provide minimal information to either the clinician or patient. The feedback often consists of either visual light blips or auditory signals or both. The majority of EMG biofeedback devices consist of a bank of light-emitting diodes and an auditory tone that responds to the muscular effort of a patient. The stronger the muscular effort by the patient, the greater the amount of EMG detected and the greater the number of LEDs illuminated and the greater the auditory tone. Thus, patients are “rewarded” for their muscular effort with lights and tones. A few EMG feedback systems have a computer interface that displays the EMG signal in a graphic representation. Other EMG devices have been developed which ask a patient to attempt to reproduce a muscular effort that rises and falls according to a preset pattern. At present, no rehabilitation device (biofeedback or EMG) exists which provides a variety of novel and motivating experiences. Evaluation of progress in a rehabilitation therapy program is problematic in part because of the small increments in the improvement of individuals. Currently used rehabilitation evaluation instruments and methods often require substantial change in the function of the individual being tested in order to register a change in the score. Often the rehabilitation evaluation instruments and methods are too crude to detect the small incremental changes observed by the rehabilitation clinicians. To meet the need for evaluating the small change in patients, rehabilitation clinicians often record the number of repetitions, laps, bends, lifts, and other movements performed as a way of implying a change in strength, flexibility, coordination, or functional activities. This method of evaluation has been shown to have poor correlation with patient function in that patients often perform more movements but still having poor function.
Information from EMG biofeedback devices regarding overall patient performance during a treatment session is extremely limited. Current feedback systems do not provide data for the clinical therapists that can be easily used to evaluate the precision of subject movements or exercises. Using traditional biofeedback during a therapy session, a therapist would only be able to grossly estimate the frequency of patient attempts or successes of a movement or exercise with little or no data provided by the EMG equipment.
Another problem encountered during the evaluation of progress in a rehabilitation therapy program is that the motivation of an individual in performing the testing will effect the outcome of the testing. In order to achieve valid and reliable measurements, individuals must actively participate in the testing. To best identify the maximum outcome from rehabilitation therapy, the subject must participate with maximum effort. Lack of motivation to participate with maximum effort can greatly skew the results of the evaluation tests.
A biofeedback device that can provide an individual with an attractive and motivating feedback would be beneficial in creating an inducement for rehabilitation patients to continue with their exercises. A device that could provide appropriate feedback to the patient about the success of an effort would be valuable and could promote independent practice of movements and exercises. A device that elicited maximum patient effort in evaluation tests would be beneficial.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
A system for rehabilitative therapy such as physical and occupational therapy including body sensors coupled to a computer which is running a software program that uses muscular effort or body movement to control gamepiece or cursor movement of a computer game. The software system records the muscular effort or body movements for later retrieval and analysis. Muscular effort can include contraction of a muscle or force generated from the contraction of a muscle, and body movements can include any joint motion (flexion, extension, abduction, adduction or any rotation).
The software programming aspect of the present invention can unite and control other components of the system. The central or co
Koval Ronald
Wood Krista Coleman
Crompton Seager & Tufte LLC
Enhanced Mobility Technologies
Mulcahy John
LandOfFree
Rehabilitation apparatus and method does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.
If you have personal experience with Rehabilitation apparatus and method, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Rehabilitation apparatus and method will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-2816812