Neuro-Muscular Engineering
Sohrab Barimani; Ali Maleki; Ali Fallah
Volume 8, Issue 1 , March 2014, , Pages 101-111
Abstract
FES based method used for rehabilitation of patients with spinal cord injury (SCI). One of these methods is FES cycling. FES cycling exercise has to be useful among SCI patients because of creating a periodic activity in the muscles of the lower extremities and stability of seating position. The major ...
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FES based method used for rehabilitation of patients with spinal cord injury (SCI). One of these methods is FES cycling. FES cycling exercise has to be useful among SCI patients because of creating a periodic activity in the muscles of the lower extremities and stability of seating position. The major challenge for application of FES in rehabilitation is early fatigue occurrence in electrically stimulated muscles. Motor control system selects a low-cost path among the infinite possible route to the body's movements. High efficiency and the minimum rate of muscle fatigue are main characteristics of the motor control system. This type of control system is called muscle synergy. In this study, the quantification of muscle synergy between the core muscles in cycling has been done by non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) method and considering the kinesiology basis. Four synergies were determined as appropriate and optimal synergies to describe the cycling in different mechanical terms. VAF criteria with regard to the four synergies to describe cycling in speeds of 40, 50 and 60 rpm are 92±4, 92±3 and 91±4% respectively and torques, 5, 7 and 9 Nm are 91±3, 92±5 and 92±4% respectively. Correlation between Synergies extracted at different mechanical terms is 98.4 percent in average.
Biomimetics
Saeed Rashidi; Seyed Mohammad Reza Hashemi Golpayegani; Ali Fallah; Farzad Towhidkhah
Volume 4, Issue 1 , June 2010, , Pages 33-44
Abstract
In drawing movements, the constraints imposed on the trajectory geometry properties and kinematics are known with two laws: 2/3 power law and isochrony phenomenon. In this paper experiments have been designed to study the relation between two empirical laws in straight and curved patterns of drawing ...
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In drawing movements, the constraints imposed on the trajectory geometry properties and kinematics are known with two laws: 2/3 power law and isochrony phenomenon. In this paper experiments have been designed to study the relation between two empirical laws in straight and curved patterns of drawing movements in 16-18 years old subjects. Providing two models of power is indicated that in drawing movements, invariant features can be defining. These features are independent of subject, direction and size of trajectory and together they can simplify the role of the upper motor control system and decrease the degrees of freedom and the computational complexity.
Saeed Rashidi; Ali Fallah; Farzad Towhidkhah
Volume 4, Issue 2 , June 2010, , Pages 135-148
Abstract
Many methods are introduced for estimating the similarities or differences of time signals. One of theses methods, DTW algorithm, is also a utility for other domains including classification, data mining and matching regions between two time signals. DTW algorithm minimizes points distance between two ...
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Many methods are introduced for estimating the similarities or differences of time signals. One of theses methods, DTW algorithm, is also a utility for other domains including classification, data mining and matching regions between two time signals. DTW algorithm minimizes points distance between two signals by contracting or expanding the time axes to find the corresponding points. In this paper, with modification of the local constraints in DTW, a powerful method is proposed for measuring the global or local similarities between two signals. In addition to increasing the accuracy of signals distance measurements and decreasing the classification error, proposed algorithm is more stable than classic DTW against variations of structure and time signal source. The proposed method for dynamic signature verification was applied to a dataset of signatures from Turkish, Chinese and English people. The results of the experiments based on Fisher, Parzen Window and Support Vectors Machine classifications, showed that equal error rate (EER) is 1.46% and 3.51% with universal threshold for random and skilled forgeries, respectively.
Saeed Rashidi; Ali Fallah; Farzad Towhidkhah
Volume 4, Issue 3 , June 2010, , Pages 219-230
Abstract
Nowadays, fast and accurate algorithms for signature verification are very attractive. In the area of dynamic signature verification, the features are classified into two groups: parametric and functional features. In parametric algorithms, although the speed of features extraction and classification ...
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Nowadays, fast and accurate algorithms for signature verification are very attractive. In the area of dynamic signature verification, the features are classified into two groups: parametric and functional features. In parametric algorithms, although the speed of features extraction and classification process is faster than function based approaches but they are less accurate. The goal of this paper is modeling of the velocity signal that its pattern and properties are stable for a person. With using pole-zero models based on discrete cosine transform, a precise method is proposed for modeling and then features are extracted from strokes. These features are the deference of pole angles of strokes. Applying linear, parzen window and support vector machine classifiers, the proposed algorithm was tested on data set from Persian, Chinese, English and Turkish people and with common threshold, resulted equal error rates of 1.25% and 1.78% in the random and skilled forgeries, respectively.
Rehabilitation Engineering
Ali Maleki; Ali Fallah
Volume 2, Issue 2 , June 2008, , Pages 131-140
Abstract
Patients with spinal cord injury in C5/C6 levels are capable of controlling the voluntary movements of the shoulder joints, but some muscles involved in the movement of the elbow joint are paralyzed in these patients. By using FES as well as an appropriate stimulation of the paralyzed muscles, the patients ...
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Patients with spinal cord injury in C5/C6 levels are capable of controlling the voluntary movements of the shoulder joints, but some muscles involved in the movement of the elbow joint are paralyzed in these patients. By using FES as well as an appropriate stimulation of the paralyzed muscles, the patients can be assisted with their essential daily living activities. One of the major problems of using FES for reanimation of the paralyzed arm is to provide voluntary commands for FES control. Kinematic synergy and muscle synergy are two main options in this regard. In this paper, these two command sources were evaluated and compared. Furthermore, a mixed method was proposed, which improves performance. Thus, the EMG and kinematical data during a set of activities of daily living (AOL) were recorded and processed. Precise investigations were carried out in order to determine the appropriate values for high-level neural network controller parameters. Next, six different neural network controller structures were trained by the EMG and/or kinematical data. Using this method, cross correlation between the estimation and measurement for all records was obtained as 94.76% for kinematic synergy and 98.08%, for muscle synergy. In the mixed method, these values were improved to 94.82% and 98.84% respectively. Furthermore, mixed method paved the way to improve the performance of low-level controller with estimating the desired kinematics for the distal joint and desired activity for the paralyzed muscle.
Biomechanical Motor Control / Motor Control of Human Movement
Saeed Rashidi; Ali Fallah; Farzad Towhidkhah
Volume 1, Issue 4 , June 2007, , Pages 269-280
Abstract
Dynamic signature verification based on temporal features are more precise than the static methods because in addition to position information of the drawing pattern, it uses local and global features extracted from velocity, acceleration, pressure and pen angle signals, while static methods only use ...
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Dynamic signature verification based on temporal features are more precise than the static methods because in addition to position information of the drawing pattern, it uses local and global features extracted from velocity, acceleration, pressure and pen angle signals, while static methods only use image information. In this study, we segmented the signature patterns using the basic role of velocity in the control process of skilled movements and then the function features were extracted. In order to signal the matching evaluation, we applied five generalized functions and five weighting strategies for score level fusion. The results showed that the correlation criterion had the minimum error. The experiments on the database, consisting of persons of Persian, Chinese and English, showed that the skilled forgeries obtained an equal error rate (EER) of 0.87% and 1.24% for the user and universal thresholds, respectively.
Tissue Engineering
Giti Torkamaan; Ali Fallah; Mahmoud Mofid; Sedighe Ghiasi; Ghadam Ali Talebi
Volume 1, Issue 3 , June 2007, , Pages 215-225
Abstract
In this study 22 male Guinea Pigs, 4-6 months old, weighting 400-450 g were used. A computer controlled indentor system was used to apply a controlled pressure. The applied pressure was 291 mmHg for 3 hours over the trochanter region of animal hind limb. The animals were divided in three groups; in group ...
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In this study 22 male Guinea Pigs, 4-6 months old, weighting 400-450 g were used. A computer controlled indentor system was used to apply a controlled pressure. The applied pressure was 291 mmHg for 3 hours over the trochanter region of animal hind limb. The animals were divided in three groups; in group 1, pressure was applied 3 hours continuously, in group 2, pressure was applied 90 minutes at two days and in group 3, Pressure was applied in two cycles of 90 minutes with 15 minutes rest between them. To study the biomechanical and histological changes, tissue was removed 7 days after pressure application. Uniaxial tensile test was performed at a deformation rate of 20 mm/min. In this test, the contralateral site on the experimental animal served as intra-animal control. Tissue biopsy was taken and stained with H&E and Trichorome for histological examination. Continuous pressure induced muscle necrosis. Also ultimate stress, stiffness, ultimate strain and area under the load-deformation curve decreased significantly. These results suggest that application of continuous pressure is the major cause of ischemia and necrosis of soft tissue.
Neuro-Muscular Engineering
Amir Homayoun Jafari; Seyed Mohammad Reza Hashemi Golpayegani; Farzad Towhidkhah; Ali Fallah
Volume -2, Issue 1 , July 2005, , Pages 57-70
Abstract
A hierarchical structure model with three levels is presented for modeling motor control in skill movements. At each level, based on accuracy and quality of control, a specific controller is activated. At first level, control concepts are qualitative. The duty of the first level is to provide stability ...
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A hierarchical structure model with three levels is presented for modeling motor control in skill movements. At each level, based on accuracy and quality of control, a specific controller is activated. At first level, control concepts are qualitative. The duty of the first level is to provide stability of system, based on the received qualitative information from second level such as the decrement or increment of error. A self-organized controller at first level is used to generate qualitative control commands, and it plays an encouragement-punishment role to keep the stability of system by sending discrete commands to the second level. This controller only contributes at control action when the controller of second level can not preserve stability individually. At second level, control concepts are quantitative. The duty of the second level is adaptation and control of system accurately. The received information at this level generally comes from sensory and visual feedbacks, and it includes more accurate concepts of control action - like the amount of movement error. A model based on the predictive controller at second level generates quantitative control commands and indeed, determines trajectory of movement accurately. A fuzzy switch combines the control commands of first and second levels, based on the sliding mode strategy, to provide a robust control. At third level, this command is interpreted and then is applied to the involved muscles in movement. The received information at this level is generally the contribution of muscles in performing movement and the effects of environment on the movement, which comes from sensory feedbacks. The presented model with this hierarchical structure has a proper ability to control and keep the stability of system. The simulation results confirm this subject.
Tissue Engineering
Giti Torkamaan; Ali Akbar Sharafi; Ali Fallah; Hamid Reza Katouzian; Mahmoud Mofid
Volume -1, Issue 1 , June 2004, , Pages 93-100
Abstract
Pressure ulcers are areas of tissue necrosis that tend to develop when tissue is compressed between a bony prominence and an external surface. Normal structure and physiological function of tissue viability are recognized but mechanism of tissue breakdown is unknown. In this study, an attempt has been ...
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Pressure ulcers are areas of tissue necrosis that tend to develop when tissue is compressed between a bony prominence and an external surface. Normal structure and physiological function of tissue viability are recognized but mechanism of tissue breakdown is unknown. In this study, an attempt has been made to recognize the tissue mechanical changes after pressure application using 61 male albino guinea pigs, 4-6 months old, weighing 300-450 g. A computer controlled indentor system was developed to induce pressure sore. This system is capable of monitoring and adjusting the applied pressure, friction and shearing force throughout the experiment. The applied force remained within ±10g of desired target force. The applied pressures were at 291 and 387 mmHg for 1,3 or 5 hours over the trochanter region of animal hind limb. The tissue was removed and blood was taken immediately, 2 and 7 days after pressure release. Uniaxial tensile test was performed using deformation rate of 20 mm/min. In this test, the contralateral site on the experimental animal served as intra-animal control. Full- thickness biopsy was taken and stained with H & E, trichrome and orcein for histological examination. Results of tensile tests showed that the maximum tensile strength (Fmax), stress and the area under load-deformation curve (work) have decreased significantly 7 days after pressure application (P<0.05). Histological study immediately and 2 days after force release, showed an increase in cellularity and inflammatory cells infiltration. Muscle necrosis and reduction of the skin fibers density were observed 7 days after load release. Serum CPK (2 days after) was increased. The amount of lactic acid as well as phosphorus immediately and 2 days after pressure also increased (P<0.05). Finally it was distinguished that pressure changed the biomechanical properties of skin and muscle. Decrease of tissue resistance was consistent with the histological findings as well as elevation of muscle specific enzymes in blood. It was also observed that pressure resulted in the tissue ischemia and breakdown.
