A biomechanical model to estimate corrective changes in muscle activation patterns for stroke patients

We have created a model to estimate the corrective changes in muscle activation patterns needed for a person who has had a stroke to walk with an improved gait—nearing that of an unimpaired person. Using this model, we examined how different functional electrical stimulation (FES) protocols would alter gait patterns. The approach is based on an electromyographically (EMG)-driven model to estimate joint moments. Different stimulation protocols were examined, which generated different corrective muscle activation patterns. These approaches grouped the muscles together into flexor and extensor groups (to simulate FES using surface electrodes) or left each muscle to vary independently (to simulate FES using intramuscular electrodes). In addition, we limited the maximal change in muscle activation (to reduce fatigue). We observed that with the two protocols (grouped and ungrouped muscles), the calculated corrective changes in muscle activation yielded improved joint moments nearly matching those of unimpaired subjects. The protocols yielded different muscle activation patterns, which could be selected based on practical condition. These calculated corrective muscle activation changes can be used in studying FES protocols, to determine the feasibility of gait retraining with FES for a given subject and to determine which protocols are most reasonable.