Development of a Low-cost Glove for Thumb Rehabilitation: Design and Evaluation

Abstract

The thumb plays an important role in grasping or pinching activities. After an injury, it requires a delicate rehabilitation program with a periodic presence of a specialist. Providing a home exercise program to patients is a fundamental aspect of rehabilitation. Home-based exercise program usually does not involve technological aids. In this paper, we propose a novel device that will augment rehabilitative outcomes, reducing costs, rehabilitation time, and providing opportunities for home rehabilitation with better patient compliance. The proposed system consists of an instrumented glove with a companion mobile-device application. The physical design of the glove is inspired by the Kapandji test, that we adapted positioning 14 patches on fingers and palm. A signal is sent to the Android application when a contact between the thumb and one of the other patches occurs. The system implements three different functionalities: i) thumb mobility assessment, ii) rehabilitation games, iii) in-game performance monitoring and results storage. The interface provides patients with on line information on actual performance and allows to monitor the activities by means of a smartphone. We administered two questionnaires to 15 healthy volunteers to 15 physical therapists for a qualitative analysis of our device. The overall emerging opinion about the device is remarkably positive.