Quantitative evaluation

Rehabilitation is broadly defined by the World Health Organization as a set of interventions that is delivered to improve the quality of life of those who have a health condition. There is a large number of outcome measure tools that are focused only on task execution but not the quality of the movement. Other outcome measures rely on the subjective feeling or experience of the clinicians. Due to these limitations of existing outcome measures, it is essential to have alternative means of quantitative evaluation to complement existing tools and discover the underlying mechanism that may not be apparent under clinical observation. In this chapter, we introduce three emerging evaluation methods that could be used to quantitatively assess muscle functions in neurological conditions. These are electrical impedance myography, myotonometry, and ultrasonography. This chapter critically evaluates the available evidence and discusses their advantages and disadvantages.