A new telemetry system designed for use with a conductive walkway: results on children suffering from diplegia

A new easy-to-use and low cost telemetry system for the measurement of the temporal parameters of human gait is described, The system is designed for use with a 10-meter-long conductive walkway, made of 5 identical aluminium mats. It consists of a transmitter placed around the waist of the subject examined, a receiver placed halfway across the walkway and a computer. The telemetry system functions at radiofrequencies. Two copper strips are initially glued under the subject´s shoes. Then the subject is asked to walk on the walkway using normal and/or fast speed. Appropriate software, written in Visual Basic, has been developed for the computation of the single and double support times, the stride time, the gait cycle time and the velocity of gait. The software gives the opportunity of graphic processing of the gait data and can give accurate and quick results of the pre- and post-operative gait of orthopedic patients. All data is stored in a database and can be retrieved at any time. The system was used for the analysis of the gait of a group of 10 children suffering from diplegia. All children were measured preoperatively. The results showed great variance In their temporal parameters, which comes as a result of the nature of their disease. Statistically significant differences between left and right feet are observed. All the same, the diplegic gait can be better described with results coming from a larger group