Identification of Patellar Tendon Reflex Based on Simple Kinematic Measurement

This paper presents a method for quantifying tendon reflex dynamics addressing kinematical characteristics of the patellar tendon reflex. The method uses a limb-mounted three-dimensional motion sensor and an instrumented hammer to assess input-output relations of the patellar tendon reflex. A health...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Journal of biomechanical science and engineering Vol. 4; no. 2; pp. 265 - 273
Main Authors:	Yasuaki OHTAKI, Naotaka MAMIZUKA, Mohammad FARD, Yoshinori HARADA, Yoshihisa MINAKUCHI, Naoyuki OCHIAI
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers 2009
Subjects:	biomechanics diagnosis inertialmeasurement kinematics motion analysis stretch reflex system identification
Online Access:	Get full text
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Summary:	This paper presents a method for quantifying tendon reflex dynamics addressing kinematical characteristics of the patellar tendon reflex. The method uses a limb-mounted three-dimensional motion sensor and an instrumented hammer to assess input-output relations of the patellar tendon reflex. A healthy adult male subject participated in our experiment. A simple rigid-body physical model was introduced to obtain viscoelastic and inertial responses of kinetic motion of the lower leg. This model is used to estimate knee extension torque by indicating the reflex responses of the muscle. A system identification method was then applied to describe the reflex responses to the hammer tapping by considering a second-order mathematical model with a delay term. Iterative prediction-error minimization was applied to the cascaded data for three tapping conditions: weak, medium, and strong. Good consistency was obtained between the analysis from the model and the measurement results. The results suggest that the proposed method was sufficiently feasible to characterize the reflex responses with a few characterized system parameters, which will be useful to provide additional quantitative assessment capability for neuromuscular diagnosis.
ISSN:	1880-9863
DOI:	10.1299/jbse.4.265