A main objective of the human movement analysis is the quantitative description of joint
kinematics and kinetics. This information may have great possibility to address clinical problems
both in orthopaedics and motor rehabilitation. Previous studies have shown that the assessment of
kinematics and kinetics from stereophotogrammetric data necessitates a setup phase, special
equipment and expertise to operate. Besides, this procedure may cause feeling of uneasiness on the
subjects and may hinder with their walking. The general aim of this thesis is the implementation
and evaluation of new 2D markerless techniques, in order to contribute to the development of an
alternative technique to the traditional stereophotogrammetric techniques.
At first, the focus of the study has been the estimation of the ankle-foot complex kinematics
during stance phase of the gait. Two particular cases were considered: subjects barefoot and
subjects wearing ankle socks. The use of socks was investigated in view of the development of the
hybrid method proposed in this work. Different algorithms were analyzed, evaluated and
implemented in order to have a 2D markerless solution to estimate the kinematics for both cases.
The validation of the proposed technique was done with a traditional stereophotogrammetric
system. The implementation of the technique leads towards an easy to configure (and more
comfortable for the subject) alternative to the traditional stereophotogrammetric system.
Then, the abovementioned technique has been improved so that the measurement of knee
flexion/extension could be done with a 2D markerless technique. The main changes on the
implementation were on occlusion handling and background segmentation. With the additional
constraints, the proposed technique was applied to the estimation of knee flexion/extension and
compared with a traditional stereophotogrammetric system. Results showed that the knee
flexion/extension estimation from traditional stereophotogrammetric system and the proposed
markerless system were highly comparable, making the latter a potential alternative for clinical use.
A contribution has also been given in the estimation of lower limb kinematics of the children
with cerebral palsy (CP). For this purpose, a hybrid technique, which uses high-cut underwear and
ankle socks as “segmental markers” in combination with a markerless methodology, was proposed.
The proposed hybrid technique is different than the abovementioned markerless technique in terms
of the algorithm chosen. Results showed that the proposed hybrid technique can become a simple
and low-cost alternative to the traditional stereophotogrammetric systems.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:unibo.it/oai:amsdottorato.cib.unibo.it:3633 |
| Date | 08 April 2011 |
| Creators | Surer Kose, Elif <1981> |
| Contributors | Della Croce, Ugo |
| Publisher | Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna |
| Source Sets | Università di Bologna |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Doctoral Thesis, PeerReviewed |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
Page generated in 0.0019 seconds