Changes in blood volume pulse during exercise recovery in activity-based therapy for spinal cord injury

This paper presents the results of cardiovascular changes that occur during a novel rehabilitation strategy called activity based therapy (ABT). Blood volume pulse (BVP) signals were measured during functional electrical stimulation (FES)-induced cycling in adults with spinal cord injury (SCI) persons and results were compared to a passive cycling task and able-bodied controls performing normal cycling. BVP signals were compared during three conditions, a baseline pre-exercise condition, 5 minutes after exercise and after 30-minutes rest following exercise. Exercise recovery was evaluated using normalized inner products values in BVP signals. The results showed that FES-induced cycling in SCI participants resulted in a significantly greater peripheral resistance level and longer time to recover from exercise compared with passive cycling and normal cycling in able-bodied controls. © 2011 IEEE.