Exoskeleton-assisted walking rehabilitation for spinal cord injury:CiteSpace analysis of research hotspots / 中国组织工程研究

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND:Spinal cord injury is a serious hazard.Walking dysfunction affects the patients'quality of life most.Researches on assisted-walking with exoskeleton robots on patients with spinal cord injury have become increasingly active. OBJECTIVE:To map scientific researches of exoskeleton-assisted walking after spinal cord injury using the CiteSpace software,and to discuss the state of art,cutting-edges in the past 10 years,and trends of research in this field,in hope of providing insights for future investigations and clinical applications. METHODS:Using the Web of Science core database to conduct subject term search by Boolean logical operators,the language English was selected,search strategyTS="spinal cord injury OR SCI"AND"walk OR walking"AND"robot OR exoskeleton OR(exoskeleton-assisted walking)OR EAW".The knowledge graph software CiteSpace 6.2.R4 was used to de-emphasize the high-quality literature.The high-quality literature obtained after reweighting was subjected to visualization analysis of hotspots and international frontier trends,such as the number of publications,country/research institution cooperation,high-influence authors/literature co-citation,keyword co-occurrence/clustering/emergence,and the scientific knowledge graph was mapped. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:(1)A total of 544 high-quality articles were included,and the number of articles and total citation frequency in this field have shown an increasing trend in the past 10 years.(2)The top 3 countries in terms of number of publications are the USA,China,and Italy,and the top 3 research institutions are the U.S.Department of Veterans Affairs,the U.S.Veterans Health Administration,and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Domian.(3)The authors with the highest citation frequency(167)and betweenness centrality(0.13)are Professor Esquenazi A,University of Pennsylvania,USA,showing a high influence in this field.(4)The analysis of the top 5 cited documents in terms of citation frequency and betweenness centrality shows thatthe current research on walking rehabilitation for spinal cord injury patients equipped with powered exoskeleton devices focuses on the judgment of the safety of walking rehabilitation training in real-life environments such as institutions and homes,analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of walking rehabilitation training,design of individualized training programs,and the advantages and disadvantages of the application of powered exoskeleton devices in assisted walking for patients with complete loss of locomotor function in thoracic vertebrae and the segments below,the factors affecting the effectiveness of assisted walking,and the potential for application.(5)In recent years,research in this field has focused on individuals,gait,powered exoskeleton,body weight support,functional electrical stimulation,rehabilitation,assistive technology,ambulation,recovery,and so on.(6)Early research in this field was mostly applied to stroke patients,and the frontier includes weight loss support,reciprocating gait orthosis,functional electrical stimulation and other technical means.Spinal cord injury exoskeleton-assisted walking rehabilitation research has shown an upward trend in recent years,and the focus of attention to the development of adaptive control as the mechanism of the medical lower extremity exoskeleton equipment,safety enhancement,the application of the potential to tap into the cutting-edge direction of the change,the research and detection means on the joint function of the near-infrared spectroscopic imaging and other high-end technologies,focusing on the quality of life of the patient to enhance the ability of athletic training,and to improve the body's structure of the field of the future hotspots and the frontier of the research.