Cerebral blood perfusion changes in amputees with myoelectric hands after rehabilitation: a SPECT computer-aided analysis

BACKGROUND: Rehabilitation, which is essential for amputees with myoelectric hands, can improve the quality of daily life by remodeling the neuron network. In our study, we aim to develop a cerebral blood perfusion (CBF) single-photon emission computed tomography computer-aided (SPECT-CA) detection scheme to automatically locate the brain’s activated regions after rehabilitation. RESULTS: Five participants without forearms (three male, two female, mean age 51 ± 12.89 years, two missing the right side, and three missing the left side) were included in our study. In the clinical assessment, all of the participants received higher scores after training. The results of the SPM analysis indicated that CBF in the precentral gyrus, postcentral gyrus, frontal lobe, temporal lobe and cerebellum was significantly different among the five participants (P < 0.05). Moreover, SPECT-CA showed that the activated brain areas mainly included the precentral gyrus, postcentral gyrus, cerebellum and extensive cerebral cortex. CONCLUSION: Our study demonstrated that the CBF SPECT-CA method can detect the brain blood perfusion changes induced by rehabilitation with high sensitivity and accuracy. This method has great potential for locating the remodeled neuron regions of amputees with myoelectric hands after rehabilitation. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12868-016-0294-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.