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Tutorial/Training Workshop 3: Stroke Rehabilitation

Duration: Half-Day
9:00 pm. - 12:30 pm., 9th July (Wednesday)

Instructors:
Dr. Chua Sui Geok, Karen
Senior Consultant
Tan Tock Seng Hospital, Singapore

Dr. Ang Beng Ti, Christopher
Consultant
National Neural Science Institute, Singapore

Dr. Ang Kai Keng
Senior Research Fellow
Institute for Infocomm Research, Singapore

Registration Fee:
Conference Participant - SGD$90
Non-Conference Participant - SGD$150

Registration:
To register for the workshops/tutorial, please download the WORKSHOP registration form, and fill the required information and fax to the conference secretariat at (65) 63567471.

Participants can still register and make payment onsite at the workshop, using cash or credit card. For assistance or any problems with registration, please kindly contact the conference secretariat.

IEEE HEALTHCOM 2008 Conference Secretariat:
Integrated Meeting Specialist
Tel: +65 6356 4727 / +65 6356 7545
Fax: +65 6356 7471
Email: healthcom@inmeet.com.sg
Mail: Block 998 Toa Payoh North, #07-18/19 Singapore 318993

NB: The online registration was closed on 23rd June due to logistic purposes.

Neurological insults to the central nervous system such as strokes and brain injuries often cause residual chronic impairments which affect independence and quality of life. This session will introduce the core principles in neurorehabilitation including prediction of functional outcome. Recent interest in rehabilitation-related recovery and neuroplasticity have led to the development of newer techniques in rehabilitation including specific medications to improve outcome, functional electrical stimulation driven neuroprostheses, constraint-induced movement therapies and use of robotic aided techniques for ambulation and upper limb training. The art of neurorehabilitation also involves the integration of such techniques into the clinical rehabilitation milieu.

Dr. CHUA Sui Geok Karen (MBBS, MRCP (UK), FRCP (Eden), FAMS) is a senior consultant rehabilitation physician practicing in Tan Tock Seng Hospital Rehabilitation Centre since 1993. She obtained her fellowships in Rehabilitation Medicine from USA and internal medicine from the UK in 20006. Her subspecialty interests include neurorehabilitation medicine including stroke and brain injury rehabilitation, spasticity interventional treatment and pain management. She is also a registered medical acupuncturist since 2000. She is also active in rehabilitation research involving novel interventions and predictive modeling in rehabilitation outcome.l (USA) and Prof. S.K.Mishra (India)

This overview will describe the pathopysiology of stroke and its acute management in the neurocritical care unit. Particular emphasis will be placed on neurointerventional and surgical procedures employed in clinical practice.

Dr. ANG Beng Ti Christopher is a consultant neurosurgeon and co-director of the Neurointensive Care Unit in National Neuroscience Institute, Singapore. He is a Clinical Investigator in the Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences as well as an Associate Professor in the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School. Dr. Ang has a background in Neurosurgery, having trained both locally at the National Neuroscience Institute (NNI) and in Vancouver, Canada at the University of British Columbia Division of Neurosurgery. His clinical interests are in the critical care management of head injury and the treatment of brain tumours in adults. To pursue his interests in basic neuroscience research, he spent time under the mentorship of Prof. Xiao Zhi Cheng and Prof. Ling Eng Ang at the Department of Clinical Research at Singapore General Hospital and the Department of Anatomy at the National University of Singapore, carrying out work directed at unraveling the molecular mechanisms regulating oligodendrocyte maturation and myelination. The opportunity to be able to understand patients and disease from both a clinical and cell biology perspective continues to fascinate and challenge him, as is the difficult task of attempting to translate findings on the bench towards meaningful patient care.

Robotic rehabilitation has been clinically shown to have a significant impact on neurorecovery of stroke patients. The first part of this session provides a brief overview on the technology of robotic rehabilitation developed over the past few years. The development of the technology called the Brain Computer Interface (BCI) has provided a promising communication channel to translate the mental imagination of movements into computer commands, thus providing a promising communication channel to stroke patients. The second part of this session introduces the current research work to synergize Motor Imagery-based BCI with robotic rehabilitation, as well as describes the process on how the motor intent is recognized from scalp-recorded electroencephalogram (EEG) non-invasively.

Dr. ANG Kai Keng received the B.A.S.c degree (1^st class), the M.Phil degree and the Ph.D. degree in Computer Engineering from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore in 1997, 1999 and 2008 respectively. He was a senior software engineer with Delphi Automotive Systems Singapore Pte Ltd working on embedded software for automotive engine controllers from 1999 to 2003.  He worked towards his Ph.D. degree in the Centre for Computational Intelligence, School of Computer Engineering, Nanyang Technological University from 2003 to 2007, and has been awarded the Singapore Millennium Foundation Ph.D. Scholarship in 2005. He is currently a senior research fellow with the Institute for Infocomm Research, Agency for Science, Technology and Research, Singapore. His current research is on brain-computer interface and his research interests include computational intelligence, machine learning, and pattern recognition.