A Low-Cost, Computer-Interfaced Drawing Pad for fMRI Studies of Dysgraphia and Dyslexia

Sensors

Frederick Reitz¹  Todd Richards²  Kelvin Wu¹  Peter Boord²  Mary Askren²  Thomas Lewis¹ 

[1] Instrument Development Lab, Center on Human Development and Disability, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA; E-Mails:;Integrated Brain Imaging Center, Department of Radiology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA; E-Mails:

关键词: fMRI;    MRI-compatible;    dygraphia;    dyslexia;    lexical;    handwriting;    LabVIEW;   

DOI  :  10.3390/s130405099

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

We have developed a pen and writing tablet for use by subjects during fMRI scanning. The pen consists of two jacketed, multi-mode optical fibers routed to the tip of a hollowed-out ball-point pen. The pen has been further modified by addition of a plastic plate to maintain a perpendicular pen-tablet orientation. The tablet is simply a non-metallic frame holding a paper print of continuously varying color gradients. The optical fibers are routed out of the MRI bore to a light-tight box in an adjacent control room. Within the box, light from a high intensity LED is coupled into one of the fibers, while the other fiber abuts a color sensor. Light from the LED exits the pen tip, illuminating a small spot on the tablet, and the resulting reflected light is routed to the color sensor. Given a lookup table of position for each color on the tablet, the coordinates of the pen on the tablet may be displayed and digitized in real-time. While simple and inexpensive, the system achieves sufficient resolution to grade writing tasks testing dysgraphic and dyslexic phenomena.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2013 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.