Design and Construction of a Portable Kit for the Assessment of Gait Parameters in Daily-Rehabilitation. (rogetto di un Kit Portatile per la Misura di Parametri del Cammino nella Riabilitazione Giornaliera)

摘要

To daily monitor the gait improvement of a subject, during a motion exercise and in rehabilitation care, it is necessary the assessment at least of the path length, velocity, time duration, number of steps. The report presents a novel approach for gait monitoring based on: one step counter; two couples of photo-emitter-detectors (at the initial and final path position, to detect the start and the end of the gait exercise); one central unit for collecting and processing the telemetrically transmitted data; a software interface. A case study for one subject at the 1st level of the Tinetti test, showed the clinical feasibility. The kit can be used with different rehabilitation tools and ground rugosity. The kit shows the following advantages: a) very low costs, when compared to optoelectronic solutions or other portable solutions (such as LifeGait or GAITRite); b) very high accuracy, also for subjects with unbalance problems, when compared to other commercial solutions.