{"id":6004,"date":"2024-10-22T17:20:52","date_gmt":"2024-10-22T21:20:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/research\/?p=6004"},"modified":"2024-11-01T12:42:02","modified_gmt":"2024-11-01T16:42:02","slug":"research-in-motion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/momentum\/research-in-motion\/","title":{"rendered":"Research in Motion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Research in Motion<\/em><\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Written by Allison Farrelly \u201916
Photos by Beau Jones<\/p>\n\n\n

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SUSAN D\u2019ANDREA
Assistant Professor of Kinesiology and Biomedical Engineering
Ryan Research Assistant Professor of Neuroscience<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

While University of Rhode Island (URI) Assistant Professor Susan D\u2019Andrea\u2019s background is in engineering, her focus is on human movement. And she\u2019s combining her disciplines to develop games that can help stoke patients walk better and amputees use their prosthetics better, among many other applications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI wanted to use my engineering skills to work with people and help improve their function in everyday life,\u201d says D\u2019Andrea who holds appointments in kinesiology, biomedical engineering and is a Ryan research assistant professor of neuroscience. \u201cMy overall research goal is to develop therapies for patients with movement disabilities that can be done at home to augment the work done with a physical therapist.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While traditional physical therapy for movement disabilities involves hands-on work in a clinic and a worksheet of self-guided, at-home exercises, D\u2019Andrea is hoping to up patients\u2019 progress by gamifying it with virtual reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen you play a game, you are driven to get a good score and boost your score with each new attempt,\u201d she explains. \u201cWe have designed virtual reality games for rehabilitation that have different difficulty levels that motivate the patient to progress through the levels and continue the therapy which will ultimately improve their function.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ALL ABOUT THE EQUIPMENT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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URI\u2019s biomechanics lab is uniquely equipped for a researcher with questions like D\u2019Andrea\u2019s. D\u2019Andrea uses a host of high- tech equipment to map human movement and to identify patterns and develop targeted therapies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUsing the equipment in the lab, I can understand if people are moving incorrectly and why they\u2019re moving incorrectly and come up with ways to improve their movement patterns,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A motion capture system allows D\u2019Andrea to use reflective markers placed on the body to map the motions of someone. She then uses these digital markers to create a digital skeletal map of the person and analyze the angles and forces of joints from the ankle, knee or hip joints to the whole-body system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To understand how muscles are working, she often uses electromyography system (EMG) that measures muscle activity during movement. She also uses an inertial suit, fitted with inertial sensors that can be put on different parts of the body, to monitor motion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To bring her therapies to life, she takes advantage of virtual and augmented reality systems she has designed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RESEARCH IN MOTION<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

D\u2019Andrea has spent the past two years developing virtual reality games that help stroke patients improve their walking. Funded by a $25,000 grant from the Rhode Island Foundation, D\u2019Andrea had five study participants walk on a treadmill in front of a large screen while wearing an inertial suit that recorded information on how their arms, legs, heads, and torso were moving. The screen featured a virtual environment with an avatar, controlled by the person\u2019s movement, and virtual obstacles for the avatar to step over, around or on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After an intensive intervention of 10 sessions over two weeks, D\u2019Andrea and her team saw \u201cvery, very promising results\u201d compared to the baseline measurements taken of patients\u2019 balance and walking abilities.<\/p>\n\n\n

\u201cOur participants improved their walking abilities significantly. Each person was able to achieve a clinically significant improvement. This has implications in their everyday life, their actual function and ability to walk.\u201d <\/blockquote>Susan D’Andrea<\/cite><\/div><\/section>\n\n\n

In addition to walking, D\u2019Andrea is also developing upper extremity therapies for stroke patients. One project leverages carnival-themed computer games developed by D\u2019Andrea and a team of students she mentors in the biomedical engineering senior capstone course. The project engages stroke patients in exercising their elbow, wrist, and shoulder while wearing an inertial suit to track movements and drive the motion of an avatar in the virtual environment. Another group of her capstone students helped create an augmented reality game to train amputees to develop more control of their prosthetics and prevent prosthetic rejection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The game features a visor that projects a pyramid of six holographic cups that need to be stacked in different orders with an upper extremity prosthesis. They\u2019re still testing the game with a bypass prosthetic\u2014designed to stimulate a prosthetic for people with arms\u2014with plans to expand the trial to amputees soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ultimately, D\u2019Andrea and her team hope to develop the games they are working on into therapies for patients to use at home. Current devices for home augmented and virtual reality, like the Microsoft HoloLens and the Apple Vision Pro, come at a prohibitive price point, but D\u2019Andrea has hopes this won\u2019t always be the case. In the meantime, she\u2019s perfecting her methods and exploring alternatives like phone apps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re showing that virtual and augmented reality work for rehabilitation. They\u2019re effective, motivating and engaging for patients to use,\u201d
she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

D\u2019Andrea started her career at Florida\u2019s Miami Children\u2019s Hospital, working with children with cerebral palsy in in a clinical motion analysis lab. She went on to hold appointments at Ohio State University, the Cleveland Clinic and Brown University. Most recently, she spent 10 years at the Providence VA Medical Center in Rhode Island, developing therapies to help amputees use their prosthetics more effectively. She\u2019s found URI to be a prime place to be for this phase of her career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s nice to be able to work directly with students,\u201d she says. \u201cI love to teach and engage students in research. And it\u2019s very satisfying to see when the light bulb goes off and I know the students really understand what we are trying to do.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Research in Motion Written by Allison Farrelly \u201916Photos by Beau Jones While University of Rhode Island (URI) Assistant Professor Susan D\u2019Andrea\u2019s background is in engineering, her focus is on human movement. And she\u2019s combining her disciplines to develop games that can help stoke patients walk better and amputees use their prosthetics better, among many other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":581,"featured_media":6113,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-momentum-fall-24-body"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/momentum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/momentum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/momentum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/momentum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/581"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/momentum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6004"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/momentum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6499,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/momentum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6004\/revisions\/6499"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/momentum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/momentum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/momentum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/momentum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}