Title :
An umbilical data-acquisition system for measuring pressures between the foot and shoe
Author :
Zhu, Hongsheng ; Maalej, Nabil ; Webster, John G. ; Tompkins, Willis J. ; Bach-y-Rita, Paul ; Wertsch, Jacqueline J.
Author_Institution :
Wisconsin Univ., Madison, WI, USA
Abstract :
An umbilical data-acquisition system has been developed for measuring pressure between the foot and shoe during walking. It consists of pressure sensors in the insoles of shoes, amplifier circuits, umbilical cables, a 12-b analog-to-digital converter, and a graphics display card in an IBM PC for real-time data collection and display. The applied pressure on a sensor decreases its resistance, which causes the output voltage of the amplifier circuit to increase. Seven sensors were attached to the surface of each insole of a pair of extra-depth shoes and calibrated in the insole before and after each test using a load cell as a reference. The IBM PC samples the outputs from the sensor and the load cell and stores a piecewise-linear lookup table for use in compensation for the nonlinearity of the sensor. On the PC´s graphics display, two programs provide displays of foot pressures as real-time bar graphs or as analog pressure versus time curves.
Keywords :
biomechanics; biomedical equipment; biomedical measurement; data acquisition; medical computing; pressure measurement; 12 bit; 12-b analog-to-digital converter; IBM PC for real-time data collection; analog pressure versus time curves; graphics display card; pressure sensors; umbilical data-acquisition system; Analog-digital conversion; Cables; Circuits; Displays; Electrical resistance measurement; Foot; Footwear; Graphics; Legged locomotion; Pressure measurement; Analog-Digital Conversion; Biomechanics; Foot; Gait; Humans; Microcomputers; Monitoring, Physiologic; Pressure; Reference Values; Shoes; Software Design;
Journal_Title :
Biomedical Engineering, IEEE Transactions on
