Pilot study of floor-reactive-force generator mounted on MRI compatible lower-extremity motion simulator

摘要

This paper describes a novel motion simulator for the lower extremities of human in a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) environment. This motion simulator provides a wearer with physical supports to move their lower extremities or physical constrains as well as floor reactive force on bottoms of their feet during gait-like motion in an MRI room so that brain activities could be simultaneously measured. An MRI is one of the most powerful tools to measure activities in any part of brain but a device attached on a subject is limited because the material used for the device should be nonmagnetic. This paper shows the compatibility of the motion simulator that consists of Mckibben-type pneumatic artificial muscles and nonmagnetic materials. Also this paper shows the performance of the floor-reactive-force generator mounted on the soles of the motion simulator.