Individuals with Multiple Sclerosis commonly use assistive mobility devices, such as rollators, to compensate for their mobility impairments. However, the effect of these devices on their foot placement during gait has not been explored in the community. The objective of experiment one was to develop and validate a tool that quantifies medio-lateral foot placement characteristics during rollator use. In this study, a technique was developed for an instrumented rollator (i.e. iWalker) and validated against a Vicon motion capture system in able-bodied young adults. The two systems were in strong agreement. The objective of experiment two was to apply this iWalker-based technique to individuals with Multiple Sclerosis to identify environment-related foot placement changes. This study revealed that step width variability, but not step width, can be influenced by certain outdoor environments. Therefore, environmental context is important to consider when investigating user-device interactions and factors responsible for safe mobility in this population.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/29511 |
| Date | 23 August 2011 |
| Creators | Chee, Justin |
| Contributors | Zabjek, Karl |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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