Dr. Rick Neptune, professor of mechanical engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, received a four-year, $1.3 million grant to improve computer tools for assisting people with stroke-related impairments in walking.
Neptune will use the support from the National Institutes of Health to work with colleagues at Stanford University’s Simbios Center to assess the unique gait characteristics of people with post-stroke hemiparesis (where only one side of their body is affected). The center specializes in computer simulations of physical and biological systems.
The researchers will engineer and test software developed in Austin and Stanford to evaluate patients whose walking patterns have been measured by Dr. Steve Kautz, a research collaborator at the University of Florida at Gainesville.
One goal is to improve simulations of how someone moves their unaffected leg compared to the affected leg, which is receiving faulty signals from the brain region damaged by the stroke.
To understand this process, the researchers will analyze the role that specific leg muscles serve in walking, such as in a patient’s ability to push with a leg to take a step. The researchers will also evaluate how rehabilitation improves a person’s walking ability.
Neptune first began using computers to evaluate people with lower-limb impairments nine years ago. Since joining the College of Engineering faculty in 2001, his research on devices to overcome these impairments has led to honors that include the 2005 da Vinci Award from the Engineering Society of Detroit and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.
