DeXcellence: Bluetooth-Enabled Game Board Boosts Cerebral Palsy Therapy
Inspired by a low-tech pegboard for movement evaluation known as a Functional Dexterity Test (FTD), Rice University students have created the DeXcellence device to test the dexterity of cerebral palsy patients. At the heart of the platform is a small peg comfortable enough for a three-year-old to hold. The dexterity of patients is tracked through their ability to move the Bluetooth-enabled cylinder, which is packed with electronics, through a series of tasks on a game board. On one side of the board, patients must move the peg over a hurdle and center it on a target. Moving the peg over a path on the board's flip side enables therapists to gather valuable information about their patients' progress.
Transcript
00:00:04 dr gloria google approached us from shriners hospital and mentioned that they currently have a therapeutic evaluation tool for patients with cerebral palsy known as the functional dexterity test or the fdt and the setbacks with this are that it's not necessarily quantitative so there are a few
00:00:21 shortcomings in the sense that you can only detect time with that sort of exam and you evaluate the patient through observation so there was no quantitative measurement and she said i'd really like to know more about my patient more information in regards to how they're moving how they're being able to trek through space if their motions have any
00:00:38 spasticities or tremors and then if you can evaluate that graphically through concrete data and display it for me on some kind of interface that would be amazing the rice kids came in and said let's take some of this test and make the motion analysis from the peg itself versus from the body and so what is so exciting
00:01:00 about this new venture is they took a traditional low-tech device put it into high-tech and what we're getting out of it is the quality of motion that someone with so much tone one which we have tried to manipulate so that they can do better gives us information in a very short period of time our total device has
00:01:21 an exam apparatus and a smart peg and within the peg are an inertial measurement unit which tracks patient motion a bluetooth chip to transfer this motion data over to our computerized graphical user interface that we built the idea is to take this motion path which is a really complex data set and reduce it to
00:01:43 a few scores like how smooth their emotion was like how direct their motion path was good this whole project was never about us it was about using the resources that the engineering design kitchen has the brown school of engineering our professors and the resources that are right across the street shriners hospital
00:02:01 to make a device that would make a difference for children potentially around the world one of the really exciting parts is that we're working with kids and so when we were designing especially being one of the the lead designer on the team i was thinking it has to be something that's fun so if you look at the design
00:02:16 you have targets because kids can really easily associate targets with being able to land as close to the center as possible the same thing with the trace pass you know growing up you're like all right let me like trace the lines or whatever i'm coloring and so also the bright colors of using red on black and white
00:02:32 it's very vibrant and so being able to say this isn't a scary tool it's fun it's a game it's things like this that really show you hey my education can make a difference and what i'm doing everything i've learned can actually be used to make an impact on the world one of my absolute favorite parts of what we do here
00:02:49 is we use the research and all of the kids that we see every day in clinic and then we're able to collaborate with a place like rice university kind of the you know the cream of the crop university as far as research it's it's been a real pleasure to be able to collaborate with them and the fruit of their work is ultimately you know helping kids or helping
00:03:10 medical professionals better help kids and that's that's pretty important stuff you