An innovative tool for assessment of gait dysfunction in the clinical setting

DESCRIPTION provided by applicant The overall goal of this SBIR Phase II proposal is to develop and validate a fully commercialized instrumented gait analysis system and associated training and reporting tools Gait dysfunction can dramatically affect a personandapos s ability to perfor activities of daily living and assessment of gait is a critical component of physical therapy practice Currently instrumented gait analysis is inaccessible to the vast majority of physical therapy clinics Because of this most clinicians depend on observational gait analysis which has been shown to have inadequate reliability and validity Further two dimensional gait analysis does not capture many critical three dimensional D gait features Clinical outcomes could be improved if three dimensional gait deviations could be more objectively quantified in a typical clinic but current D systems are too space intensive costly and technically demanding The Moir Phase Tracking MPT D motion capture system is a novel single camera D motion tracking technology that fills the gap between clinical need and currently available D systems Through innovation in the use of moir patterns generated by a lightweight multi layer passive optical target the MPT technology is able to determine D information with a single camera The MPT systemandapos s single camera operation automatic tracking of multiple targets and robustness to lighting conditions make it less technically demanding and overcomes the barriers for broad clinical use of instrumented gait analysis Metria Innovation is developing the MPT GAIT system for clinical deployment The aims of this proposal are to adapt a simple and reliable measurement protocol with automated registration assessment develop a clinically meaningful reporting tool that references against a normative database engineer robust hardware and software for clinical use that is economical and achieves a high level of ease of use and deploy clinically for system evaluation and refinement The outcome of this project will be a commercialized instrumented gait analysis system that requires a minimum of dedicated space is low cost and has a very high level of ease of use PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE Assessment of walking is a critical component of rehabilitation for a variety of orthopedic neurological and cardiopulmonary conditions Improved assessment of walking and other movement in the clinical setting can dramatically improve patient outcomes and reduce costs by improving treatment planning The result of this project will be an innovative gait analysis system to meet this need