A mobile gait monitoring system as an assistive tool for rehabilitation: design and experimentation

Abstract

Conventionally, rehabilitation treatments for gait disorders are performed by physical therapists in a clinical setting. Although an array of equipment, such as motion capture devices and multi-directional force plates, has been devised to provide the physical therapists with more objective diagnostic data, restriction of the time and space limits the effective use of such devices. To overcome this limitation various wearable sensors for patients to directly monitor their health conditions anywhere at anytime have been studied in recent years. In this paper, a mobile gait monitoring system (MGMS) is introduced, which integrates Smart Shoes and the monitoring algorithms in a mobile microprocessor with a touch screen display. The mobility of the MGMS allows patients to take advantage of the gait monitoring device in their daily lives. The monitoring algorithms embedded in the MGMS observe various physical quantities useful for objective gait diagnoses, such as the ground contact forces (GCFs) and the center of ground contact forces (CoGCF). Also it calculates the gait abnormality which shows how far the GCFs are from the normal GCF patterns. By the visual feedback information displayed on the MGMS, the patients can self correct their walking patterns. The preliminary results of clinical verification are also given.