Kinarm’s development team is proud to release Dexterit-E 3.8.0 and Dexterit-E Explorer 1.5.0 with lots of improvements for usability and task development. We are thrilled to be able to deliver the long list of tangible improvements, both big and small, that this release offers. A complete list of changes is included in the release notes with each product.  Below we’ve highlighted the main enhancements for each product.

Dexterit-E 3.8.0

Study Sessions

Study Protocols were introduced in Dexterit-E 3.7 in order to add task ordering and provide a user interface for performing studies. In Dexterit-E 3.8 we have extended this functionality with the concept of Study Sessions. Within a Study Protocol, you can now define one or more Study Sessions, which allow a subject to be assessed multiple times at pre-defined points during the same Study, e.g. 60 days post intervention, 90 days post intervention.

When Study Sessions are used with KST, the upcoming release of Dexterit-E Explorer will be able to create session and longitudinal reports based on those sessions. These new report types allow you to see Task Scores for Kinarm Standard Tests that were run as part of a Study. Please see the Dexterit-E Explorer documentation for further details.

Enhanced Video Instructions

The capabilities for video instructions have been extended in this release of Dexterit-E. Audio is now supported, such that videos can now include pre-recorded verbal instructions. In addition, Dexterit-E now supports a wider selection of video formats and CODECs for these instructions (AVI, MOV, MP4), allowing users to create video instructions from a wide selection of video editing software.

Editing Task Protocols

When editing Task Protocols it is now possible to tell which Trial Protocols, targets and loads are going to be used. Each table will automatically highlight those rows that are identified as ones which will be run, based on the contents of the Block Table and TP Table.

Execution Order of Trials

There are two new ways to manage and control the ordering of trials when a task is run: one enhancement is with the Block Table, and one is available through custom task programming.

Block Table enhancement: when editing a Task Protocol, the Block Table has been enhanced to allow nested lists of Trial Protocols which must remain contiguous after randomization. Furthermore, these contiguous lists can be specified to either be non-randomized or internally randomized. The following table contains two examples:

Custom Task Programming enhancement: there is now the possibility to determine trial order at runtime. When programming a Custom Task, there is a new optional input on the GUI Control block that allows a task programmer to specify the next Trial Protocol to run. In this way you can calculate dynamically at runtime the trial ordering for your task. This feature completely ignores the Block Table within a Task Protocol

Integrating Kinarm Standard Tests with External Equipment

All Kinarm Standard Tasks have been updated to output digital TTL pulses on the standard National Instruments PCI-6229 that is purchased with many Kinarm Labs. These pulses provide timing and trial information to enable synchronization with external equipment.

Normative Modeling Updates – Elbow Stretch Inter-limb Z-scores

As part of our ongoing work to improve the accuracy of the normative models for KST, the algorithm to fit models to the normative data was updated to use weighted least-squares regression. This change was made to account for the heteroscedasticity in the data. While most normative models had negligible changes following this change, the inter-limb Z-scores of Elbow Stretch for female subjects collected using the Kinarm Exoskeleton, had very large changes; these data should be re-analyzed. See the Dexterit-E User Guide or KST Summary for more details.

Deprecation Notices

MATLAB: Dexterit-E 3.8 will be the last version of Dexterit-E to support MATLAB 2013a. Windows® OS: Dexterit-E 3.8 does not support Windows XP.

Robot Computer: Dexterit-E 3.8 will be the last version of Dexterit-E that supports Robot computer part number 10884. These Robot computers were last shipped in early 2011. If you are unsure of your Robot computer’s part number please contact Kinarm Support (support@kinarm.com).

Dexterit-E Explorer 1.5.0

MATLAB Integration

Dexterit-E Explorer can be used as a tool to initiate analysis of your collected data. MATLAB has long been the tool of choice to take your analysis to the next level. Now, within Dexterit-E Explorer you can push data directly to MATLAB. Newer versions of MATLAB (at least since 2017a) have an “engine” component that allows Dexterit-E Explorer to start MATLAB and pass data for analysis and plotting. Once you have configured Dexterit-E Explorer to use a particular version of MATLAB to integrate with, you can right-click on an exam file or the channel graph in order to transfer data to MATLAB.

CSV Exam Export

In recent years several other programming languages have become popular for data analysis, notably Python and R. Rather than try to build Kinarm Analysis Scripts for every possible language we have added the ability to output the kinematics and parameters of an exam file in a commonly readable format – Comma Separated Values (CSV). CSV is a text based format that any programming language can interpret. Kinarm Support will be providing example code for reading the CSV files that Dexterit-E Explorer will create.

Dexterit-E Explorer gives you the ability to right-click on a single exam file to export in CSV format, or to perform a bulk export of many exams to CSV.

Channel Graph Updates

This release of Dexterit-E Explorer contains several additions to the channel graph to enhance usability, including:

• Right-clicking on a channel name in the channel list, or on an event name in the event list, will allow you to specify the colour you would like used to draw the channel or
• If you use the mouse to “zoom” into an area on the channel graph, you can use <Ctrl+z> to undo the zoom (i.e., in case you zoomed into the wrong location).
• If you click on the channel graph you can use the arrow keys to “slide” the zoom window around the Holding down <Alt> while using the arrows will zoom in. Holding <Ctrl> while using the arrows will zoom out.
• If MATLAB integration is enabled, right-clicking in the channel graph gives you options to move the data in the graph to MATLAB or to plot the data in

Normative Modeling Updates – Elbow Stretch Inter-limb Z-scores

As part of our ongoing work to improve the accuracy of the normative models for KST, the algorithm to fit models to the normative data was updated to use weighted least-squares regression. This change was made to account for the heteroscedasticity in the data. While most normative models had negligible changes following this change, the inter-limb Z-scores of Elbow Stretch for female subjects collected using the Kinarm Exoskeleton, had very large changes. Previously analyzed data should be re-analyzed. See the Dexterit-E User Guide or KST Summary for more details.

To upgrade Dexterit-E or download Dexterit-E Explorer, go to the Software Downloads page of the Kinarm Website: https://www.kinarm.com/support/software-downloads/

Update 28-Mar-18: this issue is now resolved with the availability of Dexterit-E Explorer 1.4

History:

An email has been sent to all KST Licensees on 30-Nov-17, stating the following:

During our development of the next version of KINARM Standard Tests analyses, it came to our attention that there was an error in the Dexterit-E 3.6 calculation of the M-score for some tasks.  (M-score is found only in the analysis CSV files.)  We can assure you that the identified error did not have any effect on Task Scores.

 The affected tasks (as determined by a correlation of the M-scores, pre-fix compared to post- fix, of between 0.75 – 0.95) are:

• Object Hit
• Object Hit & Avoid
• Trail Making
• Visually Guided Reaching
• Reverse Visually Guided Reaching
• Ball-on-Bar

Tasks that were not significantly affected (as determined by a correlation of the M-scores, pre-fix compared to post- fix, of >0.95) are:

• Arm Position Matching
• Spatial Span
• Elbow Stretch

If you need to publish or present data on M-Scores before the end of January (the planned release date of corrected analyses in Dexterit-E Explorer), please let us know ASAP and we will provide assistance.

We sincerely regret the error and want to ensure your continued trust in these leading-edge analyses.  Should you have any questions about our verification and validation methods, please feel free to contact us.

Kind regards,

The team at BKIN

Update: 19-Mar-18: We have ended the advisory.  Our testing has satisfied our concerns that Microsoft patches could affect performance.  You may apply updates to your Windows OS.

Update 19-Jan-18: we continue to assess the impact of the patches to our processors.  Evidence of significant impacts continues to be documented in the press: Engadget Article 19-Jan-18

In light of Microsoft’s efforts to mitigate the impact of the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities by issuing Windows OS patches, BKIN is asking all users to NOT apply any Windows Updates to their Dexterit-E or “GUI” computer running a KINARM Lab until we advise you that they are safe to apply.

The Windows updates are known to impact processor speed and thus may put your KINARM lab function and data at risk.

If you are shutting down your Dexterit-E computer and see the yellow (!) symbol beside the shutdown button this indicates that Windows will install updates when you shutdown. In order to shutdown Windows without applying the updates you can: use Ctrl-Alt-Del, then in the bottom  right of the screen select shutting down without applying updates.

We are currently assessing the impact of these updates.  There have been reports of “bricked” machines where the patches that have been rushed out don’t work.  The first line of defense with these vulnerabilities is an updated web browser. Chrome will update automatically when it starts.

We will test these updates on a sample of Dexterit-E versions and Computer models, and then advise you of the result.

An article on the subject may be found here: https://www.wired.com/story/meltdown-and-spectre-vulnerability-fix/

Should you have any concerns or questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at support@bkintechnologies.com