The Research and Development of Foot Pressure Test Piece

• Main Authors: Ming-Jor Lo, 羅明哲
• Other Authors: Cheng-Kung Cheng
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2005
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/79025998238908602491

碩士 === 國立陽明大學 === 復健科技輔具研究所 === 93 === The purpose of this study was to design an insole-style test piece for a quick and easy dynamic foot pressure test. Current commercial foot pressure systems are expensive and complicate to operate. These systems are not suitable for mass evaluation of patient’s foot or orthoses. The material used in this research is TPE-PS shock absorption foam. This foam has three special features: (1) excellent surface contact with foot contour, soft textures that do not irritate the foot, (2) creates permanent foot pressure imprints after brief walking, (3) the foam material will not crack or break under excessive foot pressure. When assembled within the specially designed module for dynamic foot pressure testing, the test foam pieces will exhibit the stamping effect from the foot pressure. The resulting foam pieces will show similar foot pressure distributions as compared to those from the “print mat method”. The gait evaluation (foot pressure test) was designed to optimize the effectiveness of the foam within the module. This provides the best resulting foot pressure patterns for analysis and creation of a foot pressure distribution diagram. A correlation study between the data collected from a drop-weight test and pressure patterns on the foam was also conducted in order to quantify the pressure exerted on the foam. Next, an experiment was established to compare data obtained from our foam module and that of the T&T Medilogic foot pressure test system. Data collected from gait evaluations of a young test group was used to verify the reliability of our system. Data from the conducted experiments show that the specially designed foam test piece has the following advantages: (1) low cost-of-material and zero maintenance, (2) easy and quick operation, (3) test results can be read immediately by visual inspection, (4) the foam can also be used to evaluate the foot pressure distribution of custom insoles as a follow up service to patients.