Strokes are a growing cause of mortality and many stroke survivors suffer from motor impairment as well as other types of disabilities in their daily life activities. To treat these sequelae, motor imagery (MI) based brain-computer interface (BCI) systems have shown potential to serve as an effective neurorehabilitation tool for post-stroke rehabilitation therapy. In this review, different MI-BCI based strategies, including "Functional Electric Stimulation, Robotics Assistance and Hybrid Virtual Reality based Models," have been comprehensively reported for upper-limb neurorehabilitation. Each of these approaches have been presented to illustrate the in-depth advantages and challenges of the respective BCI systems. Additionally, the current state-of-the-art and main concerns regarding BCI based post-stroke neurorehabilitation devices have also been discussed. Finally, recommendations for future developments have been proposed while discussing the BCI neurorehabilitation systems.

Background: Stroke is one of the most common neurological conditions that often leads to upper limb motor impairments, significantly affecting individuals' quality of life. Rehabilitation strategies are crucial in facilitating post-stroke recovery and improving functional independence. Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) systems have emerged as promising upper limb rehabilitation tools, offering innovative neuromuscular reeducation approaches.Objective: The main objective of this paper is to provide a comprehensive systematic review of the start-of-the-art functional electrical stimulation (FES) systems for upper limb neurorehabilitation in post-stroke therapy. More specifically, this paper aims to review different types of FES systems, their feasibility testing, or randomized control trials (RCT) studies.Methods: The FES systems classification is based on the involvement of patient feedback within the FES control, which mainly includes “Open-Loop FES Systems” (manually controlled) and “Closed-Loop FES Systems” (brain-computer interface-BCI and electromyography-EMG controlled). Thus, valuable insights are presented into the technological advantages and effectiveness of Manual FES, EEG-FES, and EMG-FES systems.Results and discussion: The review analyzed 25 studies and found that the use of FES-based rehabilitation systems resulted in favorable outcomes for the stroke recovery of upper limb functional movements, as measured by the FMA (Fugl-Meyer Assessment) (Manually controlled FES: mean difference = 5.6, 95% CI (3.77, 7.5), P < 0.001; BCI-controlled FES: mean difference = 5.37, 95% CI (4.2, 6.6), P < 0.001; EMG-controlled FES: mean difference = 14.14, 95% CI (11.72, 16.6), P < 0.001) and ARAT (Action Research Arm Test) (EMG-controlled FES: mean difference = 11.9, 95% CI (8.8, 14.9), P < 0.001) scores. Furthermore, the shortcomings, clinical considerations, comparison to non-FES systems, design improvements, and possible future implications are also discussed for improving stroke rehabilitation systems and advancing post-stroke recovery. Thus, summarizing the existing literature, this review paper can help researchers identify areas for further investigation. This can lead to formulating research questions and developing new studies aimed at improving FES systems and their outcomes in upper limb rehabilitation.

During the last years, scientific research in biotechnology has been reporting a considerable boost forward due to many advances marked in different technological areas. Researchers working in the field of regenerative medicine, mechanobiology and pharmacology have been constantly looking for non-invasive methods able to track tissue development, monitor biological processes and check effectiveness in treatments. The possibility to control cell cultures and quantify their products represents indeed one of the most promising and exciting hurdles. In this perspective, the use of conductive materials able to map cell activity in a three-dimensional environment represents the most interesting approach. The greatest potential of this strategy relies on the possibility to correlate measurable changes in electrical parameters with specific cell cycle events, without affecting their maturation process and considering a physiological-like setting. Up to now, several conductive materials has been identified and validated as possible solutions in scaffold development, but still few works have stressed the possibility to use conductive scaffolds for non-invasive electrical cell monitoring. In this picture, the main objective of this review was to define the state-of-the-art concerning conductive biomaterials to provide researchers with practical guidelines for developing specific applications addressing cell growth and differentiation monitoring. Therefore, a comprehensive review of all the available conductive biomaterials (polymers, carbon-based, and metals) was given in terms of their main electric characteristics and range of applications.

The object recognition concept is being widely used a result of increasing CCTV surveillance and the need for automatic object or activity detection from images or video. Increases in the use of various sensor networks have also raised the need of lightweight process frameworks. Much research has been carried out in this area, but the research scope is colossal as it deals with open-ended problems such as being able to achieve high accuracy in little time using lightweight process frameworks. Convolution Neural Networks and their variants are widely used in various computer vision activities, but most of the architectures of CNN are application-specific. There is always a need for generic architectures with better performance. This paper introduces the Dimension-Based Generic Convolution Block (DBGC), which can be used with any CNN to make the architecture generic and provide a dimension-wise selection of various height, width, and depth kernels. This single unit which uses the separable convolution concept provides multiple combinations using various dimension-based kernels. This single unit can be used for height-based, width-based, or depth-based dimensions; the same unit can even be used for height and width, width and depth, and depth and height dimensions. It can also be used for combinations involving all three dimensions of height, width, and depth. The main novelty of DBGC lies in the dimension selector block included in the proposed architecture. Proposed unoptimized kernel dimensions reduce FLOPs by around one third and also reduce the accuracy by around one half; semi-optimized kernel dimensions yield almost the same or higher accuracy with half the FLOPs of the original architecture, while optimized kernel dimensions provide 5 to 6% higher accuracy with around a 10 M reduction in FLOPs.

Objective. Stroke is one of the most common neural disorders, which causes physical disabilities and motor impairments among its survivors. Several technologies have been developed for providing stroke rehabilitation and to assist the survivors in performing their daily life activities. Currently, the use of flexible technology (FT) for stroke rehabilitation systems is on a rise that allows the development of more compact and lightweight wearable systems, which stroke survivors can easily use for long-term activities. Approach. For stroke applications, FT mainly includes the ‘flexible/stretchable electronics’, ‘e-textile (electronic textile)’ and ‘soft robotics’. Thus, a thorough literature review has been performed to report the practical implementation of FT for post-stroke application. Main results. In this review, the highlights of the advancement of FT in stroke rehabilitation systems are dealt with. Such systems mainly involve the ‘biosignal acquisition unit’, ‘rehabilitation devices’ and ‘assistive systems’. In terms of biosignals acquisition, electroencephalography and electromyography are comprehensively described. For rehabilitation/assistive systems, the application of functional electrical stimulation and robotics units (exoskeleton, orthosis, etc) have been explained. Significance. This is the first review article that compiles the different studies regarding FT based post-stroke systems. Furthermore, the technological advantages, limitations, and possible future implications are also discussed to help improve and advance the flexible systems for the betterment of the stroke community.