Recent years, mirror therapy has been used in the rehabilitation of paralyzed hands. Mirror therapy gives an illusion as stimulus to own brain by exercising synchronously with a paralyzed hand while looking at a healthy hand reflected the mirror. In addition, many systems that support mirror therapy have been developed; however, these systems do not consider the dynamic characteristics in the multi-finger motion. Estimating the degree of paralysis based on the dynamic characteristics is expected to provide useful information for the rehabilitation planning. In this study, we developed an estimation system for degree of paralysis based on characteristics of multi-finger motion during mirror therapy. This system measures multi-finger motion by Leap Motion sensor and estimates the degree of paralysis based on the ratio in the velocity of finger motion between healthy hand and paralysis hand. In addition, the effectiveness of the developed system was demonstrated experimentally by the pseudo-paralyzed hand.

Key words:Rehabilitation, Human Interface, Mirror therapy, Degree of Paralysis, Characteristics of Multi-Finger Motion