Article

The proliferation of miniaturized electronics has fueled a shift toward wearable
sensors and feedback devices for the mass population. Quantified self and other
similar movements involving wearable systems have gained recent interest.
However, it is unclear what the clinical impact of these enabling technologies is
on human gait. The purpose of this review is to assess clinical applications of
wearable sensing and feedback for human gait and to identify areas of future
research. Four electronic databases were searched to find articles employing
wearable sensing or feedback for movements of the foot, ankle, shank, thigh, hip,
pelvis, and trunk during gait. We retrieved 76 articles that met the inclusion
criteria and identified four common clinical applications: (1) identifying
movement disorders, (2) assessing surgical outcomes, (3) improving walking
stability, and (4) reducing joint loading. Characteristics of knee and trunk
motion were the most frequent gait parameters for both wearable sensing and
wearable feedback. Most articles performed testing on healthy subjects, and the
most prevalent patient populations were osteoarthritis, vestibular loss,
Parkinson's disease, and post-stroke hemiplegia. The most widely used wearable
sensors were inertial measurement units (accelerometer and gyroscope packaged
together) and goniometers. Haptic (touch) and auditory were the most common
feedback sensations.
This review highlights the current state of the literature
and demonstrates substantial potential clinical benefits of wearable sensing and
feedback. Future research should focus on wearable sensing and feedback in
patient populations, in natural human environments outside the laboratory such as
at home or work, and on continuous, long-term monitoring and intervention.
CI - Copyright (c) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Langue : ANGLAIS