A Sensorized Overground Body Weight Support System for Assessing Gait Parameters During Walking Rehabilitation

Although the needs of individuals undertaking gait rehabilitation sessions may appear similar, they present facets that may assist therapists to come up with more targeted treatment. However, acquiring such aspects is a major problem for rehabilitation personnel due to time constraints and/or complexity. In this paper, we propose an alternative method for estimating gait parameters for individuals requiring Body Weight Support (BWS) during gait training. Results show that the proposed device is able to acquire step length and the amount of body weight unloaded with relatively high accuracy. This reduces the need to set up external sensors to measure patients. Moreover, it can provide gait parameters for patients evaluation which can be used for more personalized treatment. Clinical relevance - Tracking patient progress during therapy is an important part of personalized therapy. The proposed device is a simple, low-cost method of collecting gait parameters from patients, without the use of expensive motion tracking and force sensors.