Automatic determination of parameters for multipad functional electrical stimulation: application to hand opening and closing.

Transcutaneous functional electrical stimulation (FES) is a method used for rehabilitation of patients having suffered a stroke or spinal cord injury. When applying FES a common problem is that stimulation electrodes have to be placed with great care in order to avoid activation of muscles close to the target muscles. A promising approach to circumvent this problem is to employ multipad FES, i.e. to employ electrode arrays containing many small electrodes allowing selective activation of muscles. In this work an algorithm is presented which automatically determines subsets of active electrodes and stimulation currents such that movements with user-specified amplitudes are induced. Using a recently developed portable multipad FES system and a virtual reality dataglove, the algorithm was tested with seven able-bodied subjects. Stimulation with parameters determined by the algorithm led to movements with a median deviation of between 0° and 5° from the specified wrist angle and between 0% and 12% from the specified degree of finger flexion.