An innovative tool for assessment of gait dysfunction in the clinical setting

 描述(由申请人提供)：这项SBIR第二阶段提案的总体目标是开发和验证完全商业化的仪器化步态分析系统以及相关的培训和报告工具。步态障碍会极大地影响一个人的日常生活活动能力，而步态评估是物理治疗实践中的一个重要组成部分。目前，绝大多数理疗诊所都无法获得仪表化步态分析。正因为如此，大多数临床医生依赖于观察性步态分析，但已被证明其可靠性和有效性不足。此外，二维步态分析没有捕捉到许多关键的三维(3-D)步态特征。如果在典型的临床中能够更客观地量化三维步态偏差，临床结果可能会得到改善，但目前的三维系统过于空间密集、成本高昂和技术要求高。云纹相位跟踪(MPT)三维运动捕获系统是一种新颖的单摄像机三维运动跟踪技术，填补了临床需求和现有三维系统之间的空白。通过创新地使用由轻质多层被动光学目标产生的莫尔图案，MPT技术能够用一台相机确定3-D信息。MPT系统的单摄像头操作、自动跟踪多个目标和对照明条件的稳健性使其技术要求较低，并克服了仪表式步态分析广泛应用于临床的障碍。Metria Innovation正在开发MPT-GATIT系统，用于临床部署。该建议的目标是：1)采用具有自动注册评估的简单可靠的测量方案；2)开发参考标准数据库的具有临床意义的报告工具；3)设计用于临床的可靠硬件和软件，该硬件和软件经济实惠且实现高水平的易用性；以及4)临床部署用于系统评估和改进。该项目的成果将是一个商业化的仪表化步态分析系统，它需要最小的专用空间，成本低，并且具有非常高的易用性。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The overall goal of this SBIR Phase II proposal is to develop and validate a fully commercialized instrumented gait analysis system and associated training and reporting tools. Gait dysfunction can dramatically affect a person's ability to perfor activities of daily living, and assessment of gait is a critical component of physical therapy practice. Currently, instrumented gait analysis is inaccessible to the vast majority of physical therapy clinics. Because of this, most clinicians depend on observational gait analysis, which has been shown to have inadequate reliability and validity. Further, two-dimensional gait analysis does not capture many critical three-dimensional (3-D) gait features. Clinical outcomes could be improved if three- dimensional gait deviations could be more objectively quantified in a typical clinic, but current 3-D systems are too space intensive, costly, and technically demanding. The Moiré-Phase Tracking (MPT) 3-D motion capture system is a novel single-camera 3-D motion tracking technology that fills the gap between clinical need and currently available 3-D systems. Through innovation in the use of moiré patterns generated by a lightweight, multi-layer passive optical target, the MPT technology is able to determine 3-D information with a single camera. The MPT system's single camera operation, automatic tracking of multiple targets and robustness to lighting conditions make it less technically demanding and overcomes the barriers for broad clinical use of instrumented gait analysis. Metria Innovation is developing the MPT-GAIT system for clinical deployment. The aims of this proposal are to 1) adapt a simple and reliable measurement protocol with automated registration assessment, 2) develop a clinically meaningful reporting tool that references against a normative database, 3) engineer robust hardware and software for clinical use that is economical and achieves a high level of ease-of-use, and 4) deploy clinically for system evaluation and refinement. The outcome of this project will be a commercialized instrumented gait analysis system that requires a minimum of dedicated space, is low cost, and has a very high level of ease of use.