Graduate Student Seminar Series – Mathew Szymanowski

Graduate Student Seminar Series
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Location: MS2158 – 1 King’s College Circle
Presentation Title: Optimizing Transcutaneous Spinal Cord Stimulation using Closed-Loop Augmented Reality for Home-Based Cervical Spinal Cord Injury Hand Rehabilitation
Abstract: Hand function is the top recovery priority for people with cervical spinal cord injury (SCI). Transcutaneous spinal cord stimulation (tSCS) can improve hand function, but its parameters must be tuned manually by a clinician. This subjective and time-consuming process confines tSCS to the clinic and creates a barrier to home use, the setting where the high practice dose needed for recovery is most feasible. This thesis develops a closed-loop system that optimizes tSCS parameters automatically, using an augmented reality (AR) headset to measure hand function in real time. The work proceeds in three parts: hand tracking accuracy on the AR platform is first benchmarked against state-of-the-art pose estimators; an optimizer is then built around two tasks adapted from standard clinical assessments, lifting a weighted object and forming three standardized grasp patterns, giving two vision-based measures of grip strength and volitional hand control; and the system is validated against manual clinical tuning in people with cervical SCI.
Supervisor Name: José Zariffa
Year of Study: 2
Program of Study: MASc
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