Movement of lower extremity - Development of a portable system for movement analysis

Abstract

Today there is no efficient and user friendly method to continuously register, quantify and evaluate human movements. Hip- and knee joint kinematics is an area that has a large clinical interest and a large need of evidence based documentation. There are advanced movement measurement systems, measuring three dimensional movements with a high degree of accuracy. Such systems suffer from limitations when it comes to measurements in a clinic or in a natural setting, for example in the home environment of the patient, since such systems demands a specialised laboratory environment. The systems are also expensive to buy and maintain. Another important factor is the lack of good and easy-to-use tools to analyse and evaluate movements for medical applications. The long term aim is to develop a portable and easy-to use measurement system to quantify movement ability in upper or lower limbs. In this study, the aim was to evaluate reliability and precision of a custom developed portable system based on gyroscopic sensors. © 2009 Springer-Verlag.