MRI-Compatible Robot Could Lead to Individualized Treatments for Stroke
  Survivors
From: R&D Magazine - 11/29/2017
By: Laura Panjwani

Fabrizio Sergi, PhD, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the
University of Delaware, is combining cutting-edge imaging and robotics
technology to create a treatment paradigm for stroke survivors that is
patient-specific and patient-adaptive.

To assess brain activity in response to a changing set of rehabilitation
exercises, Sergi is using functional MRI (fMRI), a non-invasive brain imaging
technique, to see how patients’ brains respond to exercises they perform with
a wrist-controlled, MRI-compatible robot.

Operating the wrist-controlled robot is similar to using a video game
joystick— except that the robot interacts physically with the subject,
applying forces to either assist or to challenge the player during the video
game.

As the patient is engaging in motor adaptation exercises with the robot, they
are also undergoing fMRI to measure their brain activity, as well as shortly
before and after. This is done in order to observe neural reorganization,
especially in the brain’s cortico-thalamic-cerebellar pathway.

By using fMRI to measure this process of neural reorganization directly,
Sergi will then be able to program the robot to engage the patient in actions
that specifically target the areas of the brain known to improve motor
function. Sergi is also comparing the MRI results with the motor improvements
visible to the naked eye when patients do the exercises and using these
insights to predict subsequent gains in motor function.

As the patient improves, the actions the robots are doing with them are
adjusted based on what is learned from the fMRI.

Read the entire article at:
https://www.rdmag.com/article/2017/11/mri-compatible-robot-could-lead-individualized-treatments-stroke-survivors

Links:
Fabrizio Sergi
http://www.bme.udel.edu/people/fabrizio-sergi

Human Robotics Lab
http://sites.udel.edu/hurolab

MR-compatible haptics
http://sites.udel.edu/hurolab/research-topics/mr-compatible-haptics