Contents



Preface

Rehabilitation enables people with motor, cognitive, and/or sensorial disabilities to regain functions and autonomy. However, over the past few years, there has been a reduction in healthcare providers to assist patients with impairments. Fortunately, this decline has been accompanied by an increase in information technologies to support health systems. This new paradigm brings promising perspectives, but also raises questions regarding the therapy assisted by computers. To address these issues, this book intends to clarify the multiple domains and application fields of medical engineering. The volume covers studies on rehabilitation and assistive technologies and the subtle difference between them. It especially focuses on the technical challenges and barriers regarding the nature of the disability: motor versus cognitive. It also provides a comprehensive approach to the recent advances in tele-health as a complementary medium to support the recovery process, and to enhance patients' empowerment and quality of life. Finally, it explains how artificial intelligence is impacting on tomorrow's medicine, especially in computer-aided

The book is organized into four sections. The first section is an opening chapter introducing transdisciplinary considerations on interactive technologies. The second section is composed of three state-of-the-art studies. Chapter 2 is a systematic review of the design of a rehabilitation program adapted to technological support. Chapter 3 provides a state-of-the-art analysis of the development of usable and accessible telerehabilitation platforms. And Chapter 4 addresses the effect of feedback control loops on human information processing. The third section focuses on rehabilitation systems. Chapter 5 presents the case study of a rehabilitation application to support the recovery of patients after hip replacement surgery. Chapter 6 describes another therapeutic platform that makes use of virtual reality for remote cardiac rehabilitation. Chapter 7 proposes a new approach to restore independent living through the use of a wearable device and by taking advantage of the plasticity of the nervous system. The last section is dedicated to assistive systems. Chapter 8 describes an embedded device that assesses in real time the spatiotemporal gait pattern of patients after stroke injury. Chapter 9 proposes an innovative assistive system based on the cooperation between multi-agents and reinforcement learning. Finally, Chapter 10 completes the scope of the book by addressing cognitive issues on the design of cooperative games controlled by the brain–computer interface.

> **Yves Rybarczyk** Dalarna University,

> > Falun, Sweden

Faculty of Data & Information Sciences,

diagnosis and self-rehabilitation.
