title: Up-Down Chair: A novel mechatronic device to assess otolith function in patients with vestibular disorders.
abstract: This paper describes a novel mechatronic platform, named "Up-Down Chair" (UDC), aimed at investigating otolith function in patients with vestibular disorders. The UDC was designed to provide a wide range of repeatable and controllable vertical oscillations of the head whose kinematic features match those encountered during daily activities. The following parameters were assessed to characterize the performance of the UDC: accordance between expected and measured kinematics in both loaded and unloaded conditions; Dynamic Visual Acuity (DVA) of a group of 15 healthy subjects who were asked to identify a set of Snellen optotypes while being repeatedly moved at different perturbation intensities. Results revealed a good agreement between expected and measured kinematic patterns, and excellent reliability of DVA assessed across enrolled participants. In addition, we observed that the proposed paradigm was effective in inducing oscillopsia in enrolled subjects and that the frequency of the oscillation significantly induced blurred vision during the experimental tests. The UDC appears to be usable as a complementary vestibular clinical test to investigate the effects of therapeutic treatments while applying a wide range of physiological stimuli compatible with those encountered during daily activities.
authors.affiliation: The BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant Anna, viale R. Piaggio 34, 56026 Pontedera (PI), Italy. Electronic address: l.bassiluciani@sssup.it.
authors.forename: Lorenzo Bassi
authors.initials: LB
authors.lastname: Luciani
authors.affiliation: The BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant Anna, viale R. Piaggio 34, 56026 Pontedera (PI), Italy; Department of Mechanical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA. Electronic address: d.martelli@sssup.it.
authors.forename: Dario
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Martelli
authors.affiliation: The BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant Anna, viale R. Piaggio 34, 56026 Pontedera (PI), Italy; MARE Lab, IRCSS Don Carlo Gnocchi Foundation, Firenze, Italy. Electronic address: v.monaco@sssup.it.
authors.forename: Vito
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Monaco
authors.affiliation: The BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant Anna, viale R. Piaggio 34, 56026 Pontedera (PI), Italy. Electronic address: vincenzo.genovese@sssup.it.
authors.forename: Vincenzo
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Genovese
authors.affiliation: The BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant Anna, viale R. Piaggio 34, 56026 Pontedera (PI), Italy; Bertarelli Foundation Chair in Translational NeuroEngineering, Center for Neuroprosthetics and Institute of Bioengineering, School of Engineering, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland. Electronic address: s.micera@sssup.it.
authors.forename: Silvestro
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Micera
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D007758:Ear, Inner / Q000503:physiopathology*; D004867:Equipment Design; D064368:Healthy Volunteers; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D055595:Mechanical Phenomena; D009068:Movement; D015837:Vestibular Diseases / Q000503:physiopathology*
keywords: Dynamic Visual Acuity; Mechatronic platform; Otolith function; Vestibular System; Vestibular diseases