| Summary: | The incidence of spinal cord injury (SCI) in Iceland is estimated to be 7.8 individuals per year while worldwide the incidence is approximately 250-500 thousand. Due to the drastic effect spinal cord injury can have on people’s quality of life, it is important to acquire knowledge through research that may be used to improve the quality of life. In this M.Sc. thesis, a methodology is proposed to study the mechanism and consequences of SCI. Hence, the goal of this research was to develop and set up a measurement system for exact measurement of time between events in the patellar tendon reflex (PTR) test and transcutaneous spinal cord stimulation (tSCS), compare the two in healthy and spinal cord injured individuals to map inter-individual variability and changes following central nervous system damage. Measurements on healthy and spinal cord injured individuals have been established where each individual was tested with the reflex tests while recording with electromyography (EMG). A methodology for time measurements between the events in reflex tests has been tested and evaluated. Additionally, a pipeline has been designed and developed for further analysis of the monosynaptic reflex arc. It proved difficult to analyse some reflexes due to unwanted electrical signals that were causing inaccuracies in the interpretation of the EMG signal. Pre-processing certain data with digital filters was therefore found to be critical in order to acquire as much high-quality EMG data as possible. The results demonstrated that the PTR in C6-C7 complete SCI after an accident was delayed by 24%, while after cancer in vertebra T1-T4 the time was shortened by 23%. Furthermore, the results revealed a difference between PTR compared to tSCS due to the difference in action potential conduction distance. A processing method is now available for comparing muscle signals when stimulated with patellar strikes or with electrical stimulation on the posterior nerve roots. Characteristic differences can be expected between reference data and ...
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