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Featured in UWToday: Michael Schwartz and Kat Steele have developed a quantitative assessment of motor control in children with cerebral palsy

Keshia Media, News, Publications , ,
A child walking in the motion analysis lab at Gillette Children's Specialty Healthcare. Photo by Michael Schwartz.

Our lab’s director, Dr. Kat Steele, and Dr. Michael Schwartz, from Gillette Children’s Specialty Healthcare, have developed a quantitative assessment of motor control in children with cerebral palsy called Walk-DMC, which could be used to help determine whether or not patients would benefit from aggressive, invasive surgeries to assist in walking and motion. Jennifer Langston reports on the new technique within UWToday. An exert from the article is posted below, but for the full article, read HERE.

“Only about 50 percent of children have significant improvement in their movement after these highly invasive surgeries,” said Kat Steele, a UW assistant professor of mechanical engineering. “Our motivation has really been to figure out how we can push up these success rates.”

AWIS Presents Innovations in 3D Printing

Keshia Media, News, Outreach

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Join us at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center to learn about innovations and research involving 3D printing. The panelists for this monthly series include our lab director, Kat Steele, along with Duane Storti from the Solheim Additive Manufactoring Lab.

What: The panelists will cover many aspects of 3D printing including: 3D printing material systems and filament, 3D printing design, analysis of 3D scan data, applications of 3D printing in medicine and other fields, and possibilities for the future from innovations in the 3D printing space. In addition to our panelists, there will be a live demonstration of 3D printing technology.

Where: Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center – Pelton Auditorium 1100 Fairview Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 – Free visitor parking

When: Wednesday – February 17, 2016 – 6:00 PM

This event is possible through the Association for Women in Science. Click here for more details about this even.

Webinar: Synergy-based Control in OpenSim

Keshia Media, MotorControl, News, Projects

QuantifyControlJoin us January 27th for an OpenSim webinar lead by our director, Kat Steele.

Details

Title: Synergy-based Control in OpenSim: Coupled Muscle Activity in Static Optimization
Speakers: Kat Steele, University of Washington
Time: Wednesday, January 27, 2016 at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Standard Time
Registration: To register for this event, click HERE. (webinar is free, but registration is required)

Abstract

How humans control movement remains an open question. One theory suggests that muscles may be activated in weighted groups, commonly referred to as muscle synergies, modes, or modules. A small number of synergies have been shown to describe
muscle activity in both animals and humans during tasks such as walking and reaching; however, whether these synergies reflect underlying neural control or other constraints remains unclear. An advantage of musculoskeletal simulation is that we can specify and test different control strategies.

In this webinar, Dr. Steele will discuss an OpenSim plug-in that lets users couple the activation of multiple muscles in weighted groups through static optimization. She will demonstrate applications of this plug-in for evaluating synergy-based control and testing the impacts of variable muscle weightings on tibiofemoral contact forces.

More information about this work can be found within the publication“Consequences of biomechanically constrained tasks in the design and interpretation of synergy analyses.”

The EMG team visits a lab in Rehabilitation Medicine

Keshia Media, News

Our electromyography (EMG) team of researchers learned about arm anatomy while on a visit to Rehabilitation Medicine. Destiny Mora, Henry Ong, and Khalil Somanik collaborate on the long-term collection of EMG for their research within the Ability and Innovation Lab. They focused on the insertion and origin of muscles used in their research and examined placement locations for electrodes. Gaurav Mukherjee, who is working on active upper-extremity exoskeletons, learned about musculotendon structures within the hand.File Dec 17, 4 16 01 PM