A Novel Automated RGB-D Sensor-Based Measurement of Voluntary Items of the Fugl-Meyer Assessment for Upper Extremity: A Feasibility Study

Motor function assessment is essential for post-stroke rehabilitation, while the requirement for professional therapists’ participation in current clinical assessment limits its availability to most patients. By means of sensors that collect the motion data and algorithms that conduct assessment based on such data, an automated system can be built to optimize the assessment process, benefiting both patients and therapists. To this end, this paper proposed an automated Fugl-Meyer Assessment (FMA) upper extremity system covering all 30 voluntary items of the scale. RGBD sensors, together with force sensing resistor sensors were used to collect the patients’ motion information. Meanwhile, both machine learning and rule-based logic classification were jointly employed for assessment scoring. Clinical validation on 20 hemiparetic stroke patients suggests that this system is able to generate reliable FMA scores. There is an extremely high correlation coefficient (r = 0.981, p < 0.01) with that yielded by an experienced therapist. This study offers guidance and feasible solutions to a complete and independent automated assessment system.