The purpose of this study is to improve care for patients with cumulative trauma disorders that are related to office work. The study will compare different medical and physical therapy procedures that are already used by doctors who treat cumulative trauma disorders. The study will determine if some procedures are more effective than others, so that recommendations can be made to patients to improve their care.
Two aims are covered under this project: 1) correlation of extrinsically imaged hand-arm movement with intrinsic muscle activity through customized surface electromyography imaging, and 2) analysis of hand and distal arm motion in a non-diseased working population of computer keyboarders. The principal hypothesis for the first area of work is that muscle load can be sufficiently quantified through EMG surface signals, providing an intrinsic correlate of observed extrinsic movement characteristics, captured by digital imaging. The principal hypothesis for the second aim is that detailed imaging of an asymptomatic population will significantly modify models of normal hand movement that have been based on clinical consensus and expert opinion.
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