Muscle contracture emulation system

Abstract

In the paper a muscle contracture emulation system for the purposes of studying impact of muscle contractures on human gait is presented. The muscle contracture emulation system was designed to imitate gait of a patient with locomotion disorder originating primarily from muscle contractures in a neurologically and orthopaedically intact person. It is designed to emulate contractures of two ankle plantar flexor muscles soleus and gastrocnemius, but can be simply expanded to other major muscles. Given the emulated muscle contracture as a primary source of an artificially induced gait irregularity, a VICON analysis motion system was used for analysing the resulting gait patterns and separating primary from secondary changes in the gait of intact individuals.