Software para a análise da marcha em amputados de membro inferior

Abstract

This internship report presents all the work developed at Padrão Ortopédico during the five weeks of the internship. The internship's main goal comprised the development of new software for gait analysis in lower limb amputees. The motivation to develop this software appeared due to the need to quantify the gait deviations of amputees and make all the processes of prosthesis alignment faster and easier for orthoprosthesis technicians. Prosthesis alignment is essential to ensure that the amputee has a safe and comfortable gait pattern. Endoskeletal prosthesis, currently the most popular prosthesis type, consists of several independent components, like a knee, a foot, several adapters, and tubes. These independently components are precisely aligned to improve the prosthesis alignment. When fully assembled, they enable the creation of a unique customized prosthesis for each patient. Currently, bidimensional gait analysis is a widely used technique for gait analysis. It’s a cheap, fast, and easy way to assess several essential gait parameters, like angular movements of the main joints in the sagittal plane. It only requires a smartphone camera, markers, and software to process all the collected data. The gait analysis performed at Padrão Ortopédico used markers with 2 cm of diameter placed right above the main joints of the lower limbs and shoulder. After capturing the images of the amputee walking, Kinovea was used to identify and track the markers. With the tracking data, the developed software performed data post-processing and presented all the results. It was possible to analyze the angular movement of the lower limbs in the sagittal plane and compare the deviations between both limbs in the sagittal and frontal planes. In conclusion, the developed software presents good performance results, being able to detect several gait deviations. Another prime success was the software's simplicity and intuitive ease of use, allowing anyone to operate it without further difficulties. This software presents itself as a relevant tool in the orthoprosthesis field.

Date of Award	29 Sept 2022
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Tiago Araújo Safara Silva (Supervisor)