IEEE Trans Neural Syst Rehabil Eng. 2024;32:1445-1454. doi: 10.1109/TNSRE.2024.3381537. Epub 2024 Apr 8.
Individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) are characterized by gait and balance disorders limiting their independence and quality of life. Home-based rehabilitation programs, combined with drug therapy, demonstrated to be beneficial in the daily-life activities of PD subjects. Sensorized shoes can extract balance- and gait-related data in home-based scenarios and allow clinicians to monitor subjects' activities. In this study, we verified the capability of a pair of sensorized shoes (including pressure-sensitive insoles and one inertial measurement unit) in assessing ground-level walking and body weight shift exercises. The shoes can potentially be combined with a sensory biofeedback module that provides vibrotactile cues to individuals. Sensorized shoes have been assessed in terms of the capability of detecting relevant gait events (heel strike, flat foot, toe off), estimating spatiotemporal parameters of gait (stance, swing, and double support duration, stride length), estimating gait variables (vertical ground-reaction force, vGRF; coordinate of the center of pressure along the longitudinal axes of the feet, yCoP; and the dorsiflexion angle of the feet, Pitch angle). The assessment compared the outcomes with those extracted from the gold standard equipment, namely force platforms and a motion capture system. Results of this comparison with 9 PD subjects showed an overall median absolute error lower than 0.03 s in detecting the foot-contact, foot-off, and heel-off gait events while performing ground-level walking and lower than 0.15 s in body weight shift exercises. The computation of spatiotemporal parameters of gait showed median errors of 1.62 % of the stance phase duration and 0.002 m of the step length. Regarding the estimation of vGRF, yCoP, and Pitch angle, the median across-subjects Pearson correlation coefficient was 0.90, 0.94, and 0.91, respectively. These results confirm the suitability of the sensorized shoes for quantifying biomechanical features during body weight shift and gait exercises of PD and pave the way to exploit the biofeedback modules of the bidirectional interface in future studies.
患有帕金森病 (PD) 的个体表现出步态和平衡障碍，限制了他们的独立性和生活质量。基于家庭的康复计划，结合药物治疗，已被证明对 PD 患者的日常生活活动有益。带有传感器的鞋子可以提取基于家庭场景的平衡和步态相关数据，并允许临床医生监测受试者的活动。在这项研究中，我们验证了一双带有传感器的鞋子（包括压力感应鞋垫和一个惯性测量单元）在评估地面行走和身体重量转移练习中的能力。这些鞋子有可能与提供振动触觉提示给个人的感觉生物反馈模块相结合。我们已经从检测相关步态事件（足跟触地、足平、足离地）的能力、估计步态时空参数（站立、摆动和双支撑持续时间、步长）、估计步态变量（垂直地面反作用力、vGRF；沿着脚的纵向轴的压力中心坐标、yCoP；以及脚的背屈角度、Pitch 角度）等方面评估了带传感器的鞋子。评估结果与使用力台和运动捕捉系统作为金标准设备得出的结果进行了比较。与 9 名 PD 患者的比较结果表明，在进行地面行走时，检测足接触、足离地和足跟离地等步态事件的总体中位绝对误差低于 0.03 秒，在进行身体重量转移练习时低于 0.15 秒。步态时空参数的计算显示，站立阶段持续时间的中位误差为 1.62%，步长的中位误差为 0.002 米。关于 vGRF、yCoP 和 Pitch 角度的估计，跨受试者的 Pearson 相关系数中位数分别为 0.90、0.94 和 0.91。这些结果证实了带有传感器的鞋子在 PD 患者进行身体重量转移和步态练习时量化生物力学特征的适用性，并为未来研究中利用双向接口的生物反馈模块铺平了道路。
