Low-Cost, Sensor-Equipped Insole Developed to Monitor Gait of Patients with Mobility Impairment
Summary
An interdisciplinary team of University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers has developed a low-cost shoe insole, equipped with force-sensitive resistors (FSR), that aims to improve the management of health conditions that impair mobility, such as stroke, Parkinson’s disease, and osteoarthritis. The insole “measures two important kinetic parameters that are relevant to how people walk; that is, the ground reaction force (GRF) and center of pressure (CoP),” says lead investigator Sunghoon Ivan Lee, assistant professor in the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences. “Those parameters contain very important information, especially for people who have gait problems.” Lee’s 2018 National Institutes of Health Trailblazer Award for Young Investigators helped fund the research, published recently in the journal IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering and selected as a Featured Article. Information from the insole sensors could help clinicians conveniently monitor disease progression over time and make earlier interventions for people with neurological, musculoskeletal, and other conditions that affect mobility. The research found that the insole devices accurately estimated GRF and CoP based on models, despite the deficiencies in force sensitive resistor data.