Bioengineering tools for early diagnosis assessment and rehabilitation monitoring in the community

3-D gait analysis (3DGA) is a key assessment to evaluate impairment in children with lower limb movement disorders. It uses an optical motion capture system to evaluate pelvis, hip, knee and ankle movement during walking. It allows critical pre-operative assessment of the specific pathologies of the patient. Postoperatively, it provides an accurate assessment of outcome. However, due to the cost and specialised hardware its use is limited to academic and tertiary clinical centres. Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) have the potential to overcome these issues and determine individual walking parameters, movement asymmetry and kinematics of body segment. However, these parameters are not easily derived from IMU due to numerical drift errors over time. Adding full body scanner point cloud to the workflow allows us to:

1. Determine the position and orientation of the IMUs
2. Predict bone and muscle shape based on critical bone landmarks found on the body surface point cloud. 

The PhD student will collect full body 3D scanner and 3DGA with optical motion capture and IMUs on 20 typically developed children. A personalised musculoskeletal model will then be to determine joint (hip, knee and ankle) angles using the 3D scanner/IMUs data, which will be evaluated against the optical motion capture system.

Aotearoa fellowship