COMPATIBILITY TEST ON LOWER-EXTREMITY MOTION AND SENSORY SIMULATOR TO FMRI

IKEDA Takahiro MATSUSHITA Akira and SAOTOME Kosaku

Keywords

Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Neural, Sensory Systemsand Rehabilitation, Lower-Extremity motion, Rehabilita-tion Engineering

Abstract

This paper describes a novel motion simulator for the lower extremities of human in high magnetic field. This motion simulator provides a wearer with physical supports to walk or physical constrains as well as floor reactive force on bot- toms of their feet during walking in a functional magnetic resonance imaging device (fMRI) room so that brain activ- ities could be simultaneously measured. An fMRI is one of the most powerful tools to measure activities in any part of brain but a device attached on a subject is limited because a posture of an upper body is fixed and the material used for the device should be nonmagnetic. This paper shows the compatibility of the motion simulator that consists of Mckibben-type pneumatic artificial muscles and nonmag- netic materials.

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