Development of digital gait monitoring software for diagnosis of neuromuscular disorder

摘要

Analysis of human gait is very useful in severalfields of study with applications such as prosthetics, orthotics and diagnosisof neuromuscular disorder. Modern gait assessment relies on three basicmethods; namely qualitative observation, quantitative measurement andbiomechanical analysis. This research carried out the development of a user friendlyapplication gait monitoring software incorporated in a developed complete gaitmonitoring system, for quantitative diagnosis of neuromuscular disorder. Microchip MPLAB IntegratedDevelopment Environment 2000 (MPLAB IDE 2000) was used for the firmwaredevelopment of the software. The language for the program was written usingVisual C++. The interface on the system was designed with a pull-down menu barthat consists of File, Edit, View, Tools, Settings, Help, and Gait MonitorController. The application software employs Direct Plotting and Fast FourierTransform (FFT) for frequency (or Harmonic) analysis, Peak values and RMSValues. The Cadence Frequencies were recorded and stored for future purposewhich is one of the major contributions of the project. The programmes werecompiled and tested successfully, running well on Window operating systems,serving as interface for monitoring gait analysis of individual with a case ofneuromuscular disorder.