Proprioceptive Sonomyographic Control: A novel method for intuitive and proportional control of multiple degrees-of-freedom for individuals with upper extremity limb loss

Sci Rep. 2019 Jul 1;9(1):9499. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-45459-7.

Abstract

Technological advances in multi-articulated prosthetic hands have outpaced the development of methods to intuitively control these devices. In fact, prosthetic users often cite "difficulty of use" as a key contributing factor for abandoning their prostheses. To overcome the limitations of the currently pervasive myoelectric control strategies, namely unintuitive proportional control of multiple degrees-of-freedom, we propose a novel approach: proprioceptive sonomyographic control. Unlike myoelectric control strategies which measure electrical activation of muscles and use the extracted signals to determine the velocity of an end-effector; our sonomyography-based strategy measures mechanical muscle deformation directly with ultrasound and uses the extracted signals to proportionally control the position of an end-effector. Therefore, our sonomyography-based control is congruent with a prosthetic user's innate proprioception of muscle deformation in the residual limb. In this work, we evaluated proprioceptive sonomyographic control with 5 prosthetic users and 5 able-bodied participants in a virtual target achievement and holding task for 5 different hand motions. We observed that with limited training, the performance of prosthetic users was comparable to that of able-bodied participants and thus conclude that proprioceptive sonomyographic control is a robust and intuitive prosthetic control strategy.

Publication types

  • Clinical Trial
  • Multicenter Study
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Aged
  • Algorithms*
  • Amputees*
  • Artificial Limbs*
  • Electromyography*
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Proprioception*
  • Upper Extremity*