Clustering Technique for Quantitative Assessment of Motor Function in Stroke Patients

摘要

We designed a quantification method for assessment of motor function in stroke patients. The method is based on clustering of data from polymyography (pEMG) recordings of the lower leg. We recorded pEMG in healthy subjects and hemiplegic patients during well-controlled single joint voluntary movement - ankle dorsiflexion. Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering (AHC) method is applied on relative contribution parameters of muscles during dorsiflexion. AHC method differentiated three clusters: cluster of stroke patients at the therapy onset, cluster of stroke patients after Functional Electrical Therapy (FET) therapy, and cluster of healthy subjects, when applied on the parameters obtained from tibialis anterior muscle and rectus femoris muscle. The presented results indicate that the applied clustering technique might be used as a means for studying muscle activation patterns.