Stable, simultaneous and proportional 4-DoF prosthetic hand control via synergy-inspired linear interpolation: a case series

BACKGROUND: Current commercial prosthetic hand controllers limit patients’ ability to fully engage high Degree-of-Freedom (DoF) prosthetic hands. Available feedforward controllers rely on large training data sets for controller setup and a need for recalibration upon prosthesis donning. Recently, an intuitive, proportional, simultaneous, regression-based 3-DoF controller remained stable for several months without retraining by combining chronically implanted electromyography (ciEMG) electrodes with a K-Nearest-Neighbor (KNN) mapping technique. The training dataset requirements for simultaneous KNN controllers increase exponentially with DoF, limiting the realistic development of KNN controllers in more than three DoF. We hypothesize that a controller combining linear interpolation, the muscle synergy framework, and a sufficient number of ciEMG channels (at least two per DoF), can allow stable, high-DoF control. METHODS: Two trans-radial amputee subjects, S6 and S8, were implanted with percutaneously interfaced bipolar intramuscular electrodes. At the time of the study, S6 and S8 had 6 and 8 bipolar EMG electrodes, respectively. A Virtual Reality (VR) system guided users through single and paired training movements in one 3-DoF and four different 4-DoF cases. A linear model of user activity was built by partitioning EMG feature space into regions bounded by vectors of steady state movement EMG patterns. The controller evaluated online EMG signals by linearly interpolating the movement class labels for surrounding trained EMG movements. This yields a simultaneous, continuous, intuitive, and proportional controller. Controllers were evaluated in 3-DoF and 4-DoF through a target-matching task in which subjects controlled a virtual hand to match 80 targets spanning the available movement space. Match Percentage, Time-To-Target, and Path Efficiency were evaluated over a 10-month period based on subject availability. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: In 3-DoF, S6 and S8 matched most targets and demonstrated stable control after 8 and 10 months, respectively. In 4-DoF, both subjects initially found two of four 4-DoF controllers usable, matching most targets. S8 4-DoF controllers were stable, and showed improving trends over 7–9 months without retraining or at-home practice. S6 4-DoF controllers were unstable after 7 months without retraining. These results indicate that the performance of the controller proposed in this study may remain stable, or even improve, provided initial viability and a sufficient number of EMG channels. Overall, this study demonstrates a controller capable of stable, simultaneous, proportional, intuitive, and continuous control in 3-DoF for up to ten months and in 4-DoF for up to nine months without retraining or at-home use with minimal training times. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12984-021-00833-3.