In vivo measurement of surface skin strain during human gait to improve the design of rehabilitation devices

Jorge Barrios-Muriel, Francisco Romero Sánchez, Francisco Javier Alonso Sánchez and David Rodríguez Salgado

Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering, 2019, vol. 22, issue 15, 1219-1228

Abstract: When designing any rehabilitation, sportswear or exoskeleton device the mechanical behaviour of the body segment must be known, specifically the skin, because an excessive tissue strain may lead to ulceration and bedsores. To date, it is not known if the kinematic variability between subjects have an effect on the skin strain field, and therefore, in the design and manufacturing of rehabilitation products, such as orthoses. Several studies have analysed the skin deformation during human motion, nevertheless, the comparison between the skin strain field in different subjects during normal or pathological gait has not been reported yet. This work presents a comparison of skin strain analysis for different gait patterns to study the differences between people and, specifically, if it is possible to standardize the orthotic design between subjects with the same gait disorder. Moreover, the areas with relatively minimum strain during the ankle-foot motion are compared to improve the design of structural parts of rehabilitation devices. In this case, a validated 3D digital image correlation system has been used for this purpose combined with strain ellipse theory. The results demonstrate variations in the skin strain field between subjects with the same pathology and similarities between subjects with normal gait. However, more studies and experiments are necessaries to validate this hypothesis and also to test it between different gait pathologies.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/10255842.2019.1655549 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:gcmbxx:v:22:y:2019:i:15:p:1219-1228

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/gcmb20

DOI: 10.1080/10255842.2019.1655549

Access Statistics for this article

Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering is currently edited by Director of Biomaterials John Middleton

More articles in Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().