Postural stability analysis — A review of techniques and methods for human stability assessment

Abstract

The tonic postural system guarantees the stability of the human body in upright stance and during locomotion. It is considered as a complex organization which involves several internal systems and has multiple sources of information. In this paper, we provide a review of techniques and materials for human stability assessment. The primary tools to record and evaluate human sways in static posture are presented such as video-based methods, sensors-based methods and force platform-based methods. Moreover, various protocols and postural conditions in the literature are presented for recording the center of pressure (CoP) displacements. In addition, several relevant studies in the literature are shown and analyzed by highlighting the performances and limitations of the proposed techniques.