{"doi":"10.1109/tmrb.2025.3646748","title":"Novel Compact Tactile Stimulator With Sensing: Designed for Individuals With a Brain Injury and MRI","abstract":"Existing tactile assessments indicate that greater than half of individuals living with a brain injury experience tactile impairments, which impede their recovery. Yet, these tactile assessments lack sensitivity, reliability, and ergonomic compatibility for the millions of individuals who experience a clenched hand posture following their brain injury. We present a novel compact, automated tactile stimulator with real-time force estimation, which we designed for use in brain injury and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The system interfaces with the finger through a compact-sized stimulator (9 mm height - 18 mm outer diameter) that uses pneumatic actuation to inflate a silicone membrane. The membrane indents a Kirigami cutout, maintaining a constant 6 mm contact area on the finger and enabling precise force application down to 0.01 N with increments as low as 0.01 N. Integrated fiber optic displacement and pressure sensors provide real-time measurement of the indentation of the skin and estimation of forces applied. A physical model and a neural network each estimated the applied forces, with the latter achieving higher accuracy. This novel tactile stimulator system addresses critical limitations of existing devices, enabling accurate, low-force tactile stimulation and measurement, while maintaining a compact size to investigate the neural processes governing tactile perception, including following a brain injury.","journal":"IEEE Transactions on Medical Robotics and Bionics","year":2025,"id":586714,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9518,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1409357,"name":"Anna C. Feldbush","orcid":"0000-0002-9745-0256","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1493388,"name":"Ardalan Kahak","orcid":"0009-0003-8367-1298","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1493392,"name":"Suyi Li","orcid":"0000-0002-0355-1655","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":405247,"name":"Netta Gurari","orcid":"0000-0002-0969-9108","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1260252,"name":"Nahid Kalantaryardebily","orcid":"0009-0007-1969-4638","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":92,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:59:32.191237Z","pmid":"41884260","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}