Agreement between Opal and G-Walk Wearable Inertial Systems in Gait Analysis on Normal and Pathological Subjects.

Despite the growing use of different wearable inertial systems, increasingly diffused in clinical practice, there is still a lack of knowledge about the agreement between systems based also on different sensor configuration. Aim of the study has been the investigation of the agreement between Opal and G-Walk wearable inertial systems in gait analysis on normal and post stroke subjects. Although both systems are able to describe significant gait differences in the two populations, study results suggest that gait analysis evaluations carried out by different inertial systems does not give completely overlapping estimation about the different parameters and that this must be taken in correct account especially comparing results of clinical trials obtained by different systems and sensor's placements.

Development of a Prototype E-Textile Sock.

The aim of this work is to design and develop a sensorized sock in Electronic Textile (ET), SWEET-Sock. The device has been realized by three textile sensor placed in a specific points of plantar arch and an accelerometer unit, both embedded and connected by conductive thread. The sensors allows the acquisition of plantar pressure and acceleration signals deriving from the motion of the lower limbs. The detected biosignals have been condictionated by a voltage divider and then were acquired through a LilyPad Arduino microcontroller and transmitted using the Simblee BLE technology to a custom made mobile app. Data were afterwards uploaded through a smartphone on a dropbox cloud where a custom made MATLAB GUI platform has been developed for further digital signal processing of main biomechanical parameters of clinical interest in postural and gait analysis.

Microvascular Blood Flow Improvement in Hyperglycemic Obese Adult Patients by Hypocaloric Diet.

The present study was aimed to assess the changes in skin microvascular blood flow (SBF) in newly diagnosed hyperglycemic obese subjects, administered with hypocaloric diet. Adult patients were recruited and divided in three groups: NW group (n=54), NG (n=54) and HG (n=54) groups were constituted by normal weight, normoglycemic and hyperglycemic obese subjects, respectively. SBF was measured by laser Doppler perfusion monitoring technique and oscillations in blood flow were analyzed by spectral methods under baseline conditions, at 3 and 6 months of dietary treatment. Under resting conditions, SBF was lower in HG group than in NG and NW ones. Moreover, all subjects showed blood flow oscillations with several frequency components. In particular, hyperglycemic obese patients revealed lower spectral density in myogenic-related component than normoglycemic obese and normal weight ones. Moreover, post-occlusive reactive hyperemia (PORH) was impaired in hyperglycemic obese compared to normoglycemic and normal weigh subjects. After hypocaloric diet, in hyperglycemic obese patients there was an improvement in SBF accompanied by recovery in myogenic-related oscillations and arteriolar responses during PORH. In conclusion, hyperglycemia markedly affected peripheral microvascular function; hypocaloric diet ameliorated tissue blood flow.

MInD: moving in the dark.

Visually-impaired people can develop several unhealthy behaviors, including the lack of physical activity or sports, due to the incomplete maturity in the control of their body in the space. This research focuses on the creation of an "exergame" - a videogame especially designed to stimulate physical exercise - that, through voice commands, allows the visually impaired users to practice physical activity and train their abilities. This tool has been developed starting from an existing dance-game, by generating some appropriate interfaces that also involve the sensory channel of sight. Our research aims to study the effects related to this exergame on the motor control mechanism in a blind children's group, aged between 8 and 13 years: it focuses also on the joint use of movement analysis systems and of videogames in order to stimulate the physical activity in these subjects.

An integrated approach based on uniform quantization for the evaluation of complexity of short-term heart period variability: Application to 24 h Holter recordings in healthy and heart failure humans.

We propose an integrated approach based on uniform quantization over a small number of levels for the evaluation and characterization of complexity of a process. This approach integrates information-domain analysis based on entropy rate, local nonlinear prediction, and pattern classification based on symbolic analysis. Normalized and non-normalized indexes quantifying complexity over short data sequences ( approximately 300 samples) are derived. This approach provides a rule for deciding the optimal length of the patterns that may be worth considering and some suggestions about possible strategies to group patterns into a smaller number of families. The approach is applied to 24 h Holter recordings of heart period variability derived from 12 normal (NO) subjects and 13 heart failure (HF) patients. We found that: (i) in NO subjects the normalized indexes suggest a larger complexity during the nighttime than during the daytime; (ii) this difference may be lost if non-normalized indexes are utilized; (iii) the circadian pattern in the normalized indexes is lost in HF patients; (iv) in HF patients the loss of the day-night variation in the normalized indexes is related to a tendency of complexity to increase during the daytime and to decrease during the nighttime; (v) the most likely length L of the most informative patterns ranges from 2 to 4; (vi) in NO subjects classification of patterns with L=3 indicates that stable patterns (i.e., those with no variations) are more present during the daytime, while highly variable patterns (i.e., those with two unlike variations) are more frequent during the nighttime; (vii) during the daytime in HF patients, the percentage of highly variable patterns increases with respect to NO subjects, while during the nighttime, the percentage of patterns with one or two like variations decreases.

Congenital mono-ophthalmia syndrome.

Three patients affected by the congenital mono-ophthalmia syndrome were submitted to horizontal eye movements recording. The aim was to study the nystagmus and its characteristics, in order to give information that could explain signs and symptoms of the syndrome. Eye movements recording and analysis displayed a jerk nystagmus with a decreasing-velocity exponential slow phase, characteristic of a latent/manifest-latent nystagmus. The intensity of nystagmus decreased in adduction of the viewing eye, and increased in abduction in accordance with Alexander's law. The fast phase was toward the viewing eye. There was no reversal of the fast phase, nor an instability of gaze in the blind eye.