| Summary: | 碩士 === 中原大學 === 醫學工程研究所 === 90 ===
For the cerebral vascular accident (CVA) patients, walking ability is often hampered by a dropped foot. This occurs when the muscles of the lower leg are not strong enough to lift the foot upwards when bringing the foot forwards off the ground. As a result, the foot catches resulting in stumbling and even falling. In addition, each CVA patients have other different walking handicaps, so they need different help to reform it. The functional electrical stimulation (FES) has been demonstrated to be effective in restoring locomotion in hemiplegia. In this study, we developed a gait analysis system, and used goniometer to measure degree variety of lower joint angle during locomotion. Then we identified the variation between normal subjects and CVA patients to assess which muscle needs to be stimulated, to make lower extremities perform proper motion and lower joint perform proper angle. We expect to make CVA patients walking safer, more convenient, quicker, easier, and to improve walking abilities of daily livings by using this system.
This study has three main phases: constructing the system, collecting the clinical experiment data and evaluating objectively. In the hardware portion, we set up a gait analysis system and a FES system. In the clinical portion, we provide objective estimate of the therapy effect. Improvements are reflected in clinical trials, recording the speed of walking, step length, stride length, the average angles of the lower joint during locomotion and the effort of walking by measuring the heart rate. Carry-over of these improvements is also analyzed, indicating a training effect of stimulation, and at the end of the test period subjects were given a short questionnaire. Finally, according to these kinds of the evaluation methods, we can distinctly understand the effect and patient acceptance.
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