Biomechanical Studies and Optical Digitizer Development for Enhanced Orthopedic Footware

摘要

Properly fitting, functional footwear is paramount for preventing foot/ankle discomfort and injury, and maintaining mobility of military personnel and veterans. Custom designed and manufactured orthopedic footwear is an essential component in treatment and rehabilitative care of persons with neuromusculoskeletal foot/ankle pathologies, biomechanical disorders and injuries, and systemic disorders, such as Diabetes Mellitus and peripheral vascular disease, that secondarily affect people's' feet/ankles. Orthopedic footwear design is still based almost exclusively on pedorthists' subjective judgements, however, so the degree of fit and function attained and quality of footwear produced are highly dependent upon the level of training, experience, and skill of the pedorthist. The objective of this project is to develop quantitative methods for effective, expeditious, repeatable, and consistent design and manufacture of well-fitting, comfortable, and functional orthopedic footwear. To accomplish this a 3-D optical digitizer is being developed capable of rapidly and accurately scanning peoples' feet/ankles in natural and prescribed alignments, in partial and full weight bearing states, with preservation of anatomical fiduciary landmarks' spatial location; together with conduct of biomechanical studies: (i) to derive measures quantifying footwear fit; (ii) to derive quantitative design specifications for footwear orthopedic components and modifications; and (iii) to determine the mechanical characteristics of insole materials.