Phenotyping, profiling, precision diagnostics in rehabilitation research, Keynote speaker Carel Meskers opened the symposium December 1 with interesting new developments in the field of rehabilitation after stroke. Distinguishing between primary neurological recovery ("restitution") and how patients deal with this (“compensation”) is of key importance to understand what a patient can learn after a stroke and hence to design tailored interventions. With increasing life expectancy, aging-related processes have to be accounted for when designing optimal rehabilitative strategies.
Jana Tuijtelaars in her presentation, described factors associated with walking adaptability and the relationship with falling in polio survivors. Her research is about balance and stability during walking in people with polio, on the ability to adapt the gait pattern to the environment, for example, avoiding obstacles or following a path. Using this measure, more should become clear about fall risk in this population.
Helga Haberfehlner described developments in Automated video-based assessment of dystonia in cerebral palsy. The aim of her project is to develop an application for the automatic assessment of movement disorders in children, that allows measurements from common videos. Such an application can, in the future, possibly be used at home. By combining position data extracted by markerless motion tracking from videos and clinical scorings from the same video’s an algorithm will be trained that automatically detects dyskinesia.
A new research network that is about to be launched was introduced by the program board of rehabilitation and development. The research network will provide a platform to complement each other's expertise and facilitate joint research within rehabilitation medicine Amsterdam. A lively discussion followed.