A treadmill based swing phase re-education

The aim of the paper is to present the swing phase reeducation in incomplete spinal cord injury. The functional electrical stimulation (FES) based system consists of sensory system, cognitive audio feedback and motor augmentation system. Swing phase of walking was estimated and motor assistance was provided only to the level that enabled the patient to perform a good swing. The patient is aware of the estimated swing phase quality via three-state feedback; poor, satisfactory, good. A single channel peroneal FES was applied as a motor augmentation system to provide the needed assistance to the patient. In order to show the viability of the proposed rehabilitation approach an incomplete spinal cord injured (SCI) patient with C4-5 lesion treadmill walking is presented. It successfully releases the physiotherapists from assisting and estimating the swing phase and makes the training process repeatable.