Assessment of Hyperactive Reflexes in Patients with Spinal Cord Injury

Figure 1

Experimental setup for the patellar tendon tapping. The motor was mounted on the supporting frame with the motor shaft aligned with the knee flexion axis. A 6-axis force/torque sensor was mounted between the motor shaft and the aluminum beam to measure reflex knee extension torque. The cast was fixed to the aluminum beam through the coupling. The motor was fixed at a selected joint flexion angle to eliminate knee motion. The patellar tendon was tapped using an instrumented tendon hammer with a semiconductor load cell mounted at tip of the hammer to measure tapping force.