Sharif Digital Repository

Stroke is the main cause of disability in the world and the third cause of death, so spreading rehabilitation technique for post stoke patients is one of the most important targets un these days. The first prototype hand rehabilitation device was designed and fabricated in RCSTIM in 2008. Since the first prototype had been proved its effectiveness in clinical tests in the next phase industrial production of the device had to be considered at first all of the problems that had been observed during the clinical tests had to be solved for the future production. In the first series of experiments, clinical limitation and the interaction between the patient and the physiotherapist with the device... 

In recent years, the national health systems have supported the idea of home-based rehabilitation, since receiving cares at hospital environments is too expensive both in money and time. This method reduces the patients’ commuting to the clinics. Moreover, it enables them to practice the prescribed movements at any time.Most of the existing systems compute the patient’s motion performance in a zero-one manner which does not distinguish any small progress in his condition. Thus, a non-task based method which can assess precisely the patient’s level is yet missing. This project aims to develop a set of motion performance indices which can judge the upper limb motions in a home-based... 

This study investigates consumers’ response to changing the household electricity meter from single stroke case to three stroke case. Existence of different prices in different hours during the day is the advantage of three stroke electricity meters compared to single stroke ones. Electricity bill data of 19,742 subscribers, in Tehran Interior Region 2, during the period 1387 to 1393, has been used to evaluate this policy. Subscribers who always use only single stroke electricity meters or three stroke ones are considered as the control group; and subscribers who have experienced electricity meter change during the period are considered as the experimental group. Changing electricity meters... 

Most motorcycles in developing countries use carburetor systems as the fuel delivery method especially for models with the cubic capacity of less than 150 cc. However, a small gasoline fuelled engines operating using carburetor system suffer from low operating efficiency, waste of fuel and produce a higher level of hazardous emissions to the environment. A retrofit fuel injection system (FIS) is a system that is developed to entirely replace the conventional carburetor system to improve its fuel economy and exhaust emissions providing a low-cost alternative in an effort to reduce fuel costs and air pollution. In this study, an electronic control unit (ECU) is designed for a fuel injection... 

Paralysis is one of the most common disabilities resulting from stroke. Usually injury to one hemisphere of the brain affects the opposite side of the body. This one-sided paralysis is called hemiplegia Damage to a lower part of the brain, the cerebellum, can affect the body's ability to coordinate movement, a disability called ataxia, leading to problems with body posture, walking, and balance. Reaching tasks are building blocks of most daily functional movements. The purpose of such a movement is to transfer a specific point of hand (e.g. fingertip) toward a special location in space around. In people with ataxia, trajectories of reaching movements are far different from healthy people in... 

Nowadays, stroke is known as one of the main reasons for death and disability. Statistical researches have shown that the number of stroke survivors is growing. Assessing stroke stage is one of the vital requirement of effective rehabilitation. Since the recent decades, new methods to assess upper extremity movement quality based on movement kinematic have been proposed in the literature. These methods quantify movement quality with the use of kinematic indices. In this study, repeatability and reliability of the proposed indices have been evaluated in a functional motion of daily activity consisted of diverse tasks. In this study, calculations were done on captured data of hand's movement... 

The behavior movement of human is fundamentally concerned with the relationship between the central nervous system of motor control، and musculoskeletal system of a human. Optimal control was employed to relate these structures together. Movement is one of the important part of human life، CNS is important because it has the fundamental role in the movement. Investigators believe that CNS is learned by iteration movements from childhood and finally it chooses the movement that makes a cost function minimum value of itself. Researching for CNS modeling grows in recent years on the different part of human body. Because upper body have less difficulty in movements، it is more useful for CNS... 

Stroke is a common neurological disorder that can lead to a large number of complications such as mobility impairments. Rehabilitation has been known as the most effective method of treatment. In recent years, many studies have been conducted on investigating the effective factors in increasing the efficiency of the rehabilitation process. One of these parameters is muscle fatigue. The aim of this study is to devise a method for detection and quantification of fatigue level in stroke patients while performing an upper limb rehabilitation exercise in a virtual reality environment. This may be used by the therapist or the VR rehab application to optimally adjust the type and intensity of the... 

In recent years there have been a growing number of patients who are no more capable of leading an independent life, due to strokes, accident, or a variety of diseases. Thus, vast fields of physical rehabilitation have come into the attention of goverments and researchers. High costs of rehabilitation programs and their length on one hand, and the difficulties of commuting such patients to rehabilitation centers on the other hand, has made health department of various countries to look for alternative solutions.In this thesis, a computerized system has been designed and implemented in order to assess and guide patients in their rehabilitation excercises without needing any direct contact.... 

Maintaining balance is an essential need for human. This ability is sometimes lost or weakened due to reasons such as muscle weakness, vision problems, and neuromuscular problems. It was difficult to accurately measure balance parameters in the past because it needs expensive equipment and the presence of a physiotherapist. In new clinical setups, accurate measurements of balance quality have become possible using advanced devices. These devices are also used to provide therapeutic exercises to improve the balance condition. One of the most famous products in this area is the Biodex balance SD. The cost of this device, however, is high and it is for research and clinical use. The purpose of... 

The main goal of this thesis is the design and development of a rehabilitation device for helping patients “to improve blood circulation” & retain and recover their abilities if possible that were lost during the stroke or a accident like that (my research in karaj/iran shows that it is possible by just movement of the specific body part). The focus is on hand in this thesis because Injuries to the hand are common and can be very debilitating since our hands are our primary means for interacting with our world. For rehabilitation in case of human hand there are several practices that should be done for patients either in home or in a rehabilitation center, time and money that is supposed to... 

Exoskeleton is a wearable active device used to augment human power in upper or lower extremities. The integration of robotic devices and conventional physiotherapy is becoming more and more acceptable worldwide. The main scope of this thesis is to design and develop a prototype of a light, low-cost and wearable robotic exoskeleton to rehabilitate the upper extremity in stroke patients at home. For this purpose mechanism of a wearable exoskeleton will be proposed compatible with upper extremity degrees of freedoms with minimum number of actuators which is constructed inexpensively to eliminate the demand of expensive and professional therapists. The conceptual design of such a system should... 

Stroke is one of the most common neurological disorders, and inability to move is the most important complication. Rehabilitation exercises are currently the most effective treatment for these patients. Fatigue during rehabilitation exercises greatly reduces the effectiveness of the exercises. Therefore, it is very important to recognize the level of fatigue.Nowadays, most of the conventional methods for measuring fatigue is either based on signal analysis (EMG) which is experimental, or report by patients and doctors might be employed as a criterion. Fatigue leads to changes in the coordination of kinematics. Hence, the main purpose of this study is to quantify fatigue corresponding to... 

Many heart attacks and strokes are caused by improper clot formation in the vascular system. Mathematical understanding of the clot formation process and the influence of various factors in the clot formation process is very important. In this study, the aim is to simulate and understand the clotting process mathematically by considering natural, external and general mechanisms in the clotting process. In this process, when damage occurs in the endothelial region of the vessel, tissue factor is released and 38 different substances react with each other inside the plasma, eventually forming fibrin. To simulate the movement of different chemical components and proteins in plasma, the... 

Stroke is the second most frequent cause of death and the leading cause of disability in the world. Some effective drugs have been developed for ischemic stroke, while the golden time of use is three hours. Therefore, if stroke is diagnosed quickly, its side effects can be greatly avoided. However, it is not possible to use conventional diagnostic methods in many cases at a short time. In this work, S100β, MMP-9 and D-Dimer biomarkers were selected for rapid diagnosis of stroke based on previous studies.For this purpose, electrochemical immunosensors were developed with advantages such as low cost, ease of use, the possibility to automating the device, suitable sensitivity, reproducibility,... 

Cardiovascular diseases are among the leading causes of death worldwide. For instance, in 2015, almost 31% of the world’s mortality rate was due to these causes. One of these diseases is cardiac coronary vessels’ occlusion which leads to the insufficient blood supply to the heart tissue and cardiomyocytes death after Myocardial Infarction (MI). After MI, a hierarchy of events in the heart tissue changes heart muscle and forms cardiac fibrosis. This fibrotic tissue does not have the native one’s properties and function, so it will cause cardiac arrest and patient death. Therefore, it is obvious that vascular network plays a crucial role in the heart function. The importance of cardiac... 

This dissertation focuses on modeling human hand movements post-stroke to understand rehabilitative interventions. The model consists of a multi-layer neural network as the motor cortex in the brain and a two-degree freedom biomechanical model with six muscles for the simulation of hand movement in the horizontal plane. A passive robotic device has been designed and manufactured to record planar hand movements. Movements during reaching tasks have been recorded in 24 chronic stroke patients, as well as 18 healthy subjects, using the robotic device. Statistical analysis of the data showed that movements in a particular direction (NW-SE) are more sensitive to stroke, improve after...