Design and analysis of a dual axis, articulated, ankle-foot orthosis.
Item
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Title
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Design and analysis of a dual axis, articulated, ankle-foot orthosis.
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Identifier
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AAI3127891
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identifier
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3127891
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Creator
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Lawrence, Elizabeth L.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Vern Houston
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Date
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2004
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Engineering, Mechanical | Engineering, Biomedical | Health Sciences, Medicine and Surgery
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Abstract
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The prescription of an ankle-foot orthosis (AFO) often entails a time-consuming, labor intensive, trial and error, design, fabrication, and fitting process before a patient is provided with an adequately comfortable and acceptably functional orthosis. Many different types of AFO's have been developed, however few of them take into consideration the fact that the ankle and subtalar joints of the foot rotate about separate axes. Thus, patients usually must endure the effects of limited degree of freedom orthoses with misaligned axes of rotation. This causes unbalanced forces and moments on the patients' anatomical joint axes, and often produces discomfort and pain because of motion of the orthosis on the leg.;For this project, a JOINT AXIS DIRECTION AND LOCATION method of determining the effective orientations and locations of the ankle and subtalar axes was developed using motion measurements acquired with a five CCD video camera MacReflex Qualisys Motion Analysis System, data from which was analyzed with custom MATLAB programs, which were written as part of the thesis work. The joint axes were then projected onto scans of the foot and lower leg. The intersections of the calculated axes with the scans were determined and used to design a dual axis ankle foot orthosis (AFO), which allowed controlled motion about the ankle and subtalar joints. A prototype dual axis orthosis was then fabricated, and a series of comparative gait trials was performed without an orthosis, with a conventional plastic, nonarticulated, posterior leaf spring AFO, and a single degree of freedom, articulated AFO.;The tests showed that the dual axis AFO allowed gait to proceed naturally, without imposition of large, extraneous stresses and moments, as had been incurred with the other orthoses.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
