Ankle and foot power in gait analysis: Implications for science, technology and clinical assessment.

ABSTRACT: In human gait analysis studies, the entire foot is typically modeled as a single rigid-body segment; however, this neglects power generated/absorbed within the foot. Here we show how treating the entire foot as a rigid body can lead to misunderstandings related to (biological and prosthetic) foot function, and distort our understanding of ankle and muscle-tendon dynamics. We overview various (unconventional) inverse dynamics methods for estimating foot power, partitioning ankle vs. foot contributions, and computing combined anklefoot power. We present two case study examples. The first exemplifies how modeling the foot as a single rigid-body segment causes us to overestimate (and overvalue) muscle-tendon power generated about the biological ankle (in this study by up to 77%), and to misest

SUBMITTER: Zelik KE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6005760 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature