Integrating biomechanical tools to support foot physical therapy

Current medical procedures used to obtain data needed for foot rehabilitation and consequently, improvement of gait stability, provide only limited information regarding the efficiency of a specific treatment. The present study provides a set of biomechanical tools to support physical therapists in evaluation of foot treatments, by integrating plantar pressure measurements, skeletal radiographic imaging, surface EMG recording and computational simulations of the mechanical stresses within the foot structure. Physical therapists may even apply the computational modeling approach to evaluate biomechanical status before treatment and compare predicted with actual results, e.g. in terms of gait stability, optimization of the foot-ground pressure, etc