Facilities and Equipment

Facilities

Our studies are conducted in the Biomechanics and Neuromuscular Control lab at LSU which is a 48ft x 80ft (3840 sq ft) room with tall ceilings. The posterior 1/5 of the room contains a motor control physiology lab space. The anterior 1/5 of the space contains four workstations for graduate students. The middle 3/5 is used for data collection of gait, functional performance (strength, balance, proprioception), nerve conduction, and body kinetics and kinematics.

Lab

Equipment

Inertial measurement units. 8 Wireless inertial measurement units (IMU), Xsens MTw Awinda Motion Trackers. The IMUs enable real-time 3D kinematic measurements with multiple motion trackers by providing highly accurate orientation data. We use the XSens trackers to collect raw accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer data measurements for kinematic estimation of the wrist and elbow joint angles. https://www.xsens.com/products/mtw-awinda/

Qualisys Oqus 300 motion capture system.  8 cameras set up around the treadmill/cave. We have sets of 4 mm and 6.5 mm markers passive marker sufficient for full body kinematic analysis and detailed kinematic analysis of hand/finger motion. https://www.qualisys.com/hardware/5-6-7/

Treadmill

Fully instrumented Bertec treadmill. Two independently-controllable belts instrumented with 6-DOF force plates. Standard option without incline control. Link here: www.bertec.com

Treadmill cave. A custom-made 180° screen positioned around the treadmill for presentation of visual stimuli synchronized with belt motion. Screen dimensions: 276″ (7 m) inside arc width, view height: 78″ (2 m). 3 Optoma Short Throw projectors with images blended using Pixelwix Autoblend software. http://pixelwix.com/

Bimanual setup

Surface Electromyography. We use two surface EMG systems: 1) Motion Lab Systems MA300-XVI EMG system with 32 channel recording synchronized with Qualisys. https://www.motion-labs.com/prod_emg_systems_xvi.html 2) Grass QP 511 Quad AC Amplifier for 8 channel EMG recording during bimanual coordination experiments.

Virtual Reality. Oculus Rift Headset with LeapMotion controller. VR experiments are prepared in Unity, synchronized with the Qualisys motion capture system using the Qualisys Unity SDK.

Musical instruments available for research studies:

ViolaPiano

  • Piano keyboard with MIDI interface (Yamaha, YPG-235)
  • Yamaha Silent Series SVV200 Electric Viola instrumented with Arduino-based force sensors on the fret for finger pressure recordings
  • Adapted guitar

Hand dynamometer: Baseline® Hydraulic Hand Dynamometer 12-0240 to measure grip strength.

Data collection computers:

  • Alienware Aurora R6 IntelCore i7-7700@3.60 GHz, 32 Gb RAM, Nvidia GeForce 1080 Ti to collect motion capture and present visual stimuli on the treadmill screen.
  • Alienware Aurora R6 IntelCore i7-7700@3.60 GHz, 16 Gb RAM, Nvidia GeForce 1060 Ti with National Instruments (NI) SCB 68 input box and NI 6351 PCIe A/D board to synchronize the datasets and simultaneously trigger the recording of Qualisys cameras and Xsens measurements.
  • Asus IntelCore i7-6700K@3.00 GHz, 16 Gb RAM with NI 6351 PCIe A/D board and NI BNC-2090A to collect EMG and potentiometer data for bimanual coordination studies.
  • Additional A/D boards: NI-BNC2120 and NI USB-6008.

Software:

  • Matlab_R2017a® and Matlab_R2018a® including Wavelet Toolbox®, Audio System Toolbox®, Psychophysics Toolbox-3
  • Xsens MT Manager® for extracting raw IMU data.
  • Qualisys Track Manager 2018.1

Materials for clinical tests of motor function after stroke:

  • Action Research Arm Test (ARAT)
  • Box and Block Test (BBT)
  • Fugl-Myer Upper Extremity Assessment (FMA)