Biomechanical Modelling to Assist Gait Analysis for Lower Limb Amputees

Abstract

Artificial limb design, construction, and fitting are still considered an art form, reliant on the practitioner's collected prosthetist's knowledge and the patient feedback. The socket fitting process in its current form is not adequate to restore the amputee’s normal life and activities. An improper fitting will cause excessive strain and shear within the socket, stump–skin slippage will cause discomfort, internal limb pain, and finally skin ulcers. Moreover, most of the existing techniques are either not widely available, expensive or can expose the patients to radiation. This limits their accessibility in a prosthetic clinical setting. Also, these approaches assume no relative movement between the stump and the socket due to the inability to place markers at the residual limb, while there is relative motion in the interface. This dissertation presents a novel, accessible and safe method to assess the stump-socket interface biomechanics to help facilitate the fitting process and help the gait analysis of lower limb amputees as well as their rehabilitation. Furthermore, this new method uses a pre-collected gait data alongside a novel created platform using MATLAB and Solidwork combination to present a 3D visualise simulation of the stump-socket interface that can significantly enhance the socket fitting and rehabilitation of the amputee.