Experimental study of the treadmill inclination influence on the flexion angles of the lower limbs joints

Abstract

This paper presents an experimental study of the flexion-extension movement of the human lower limb joints. Measurements were performed on a group of fourteen healthy subjects, experimental data being obtained for flexion-extension cycles during five different walking tests on horizontal and inclined treadmills. Experimental data were obtained using the Biometrics system, which is based on electrogonimeter sensors. Average cycles for each joint were obtained for all subjects in the experimental group and for all experimental tests. The flexion-extension angles at the lower limbs joints have a pronounced increase with the increase of the walking speed, but also with the increase of the treadmill inclination.

Influences of treadmill speed and incline angle on the kinematics of the normal, osteoarthritic and prosthetic human knee

“…In the present study, we used electrogoniometry, an accurate and effective method to evaluate the knee biomechanics and the range of motion of human joints, in laboratory as well as in other places like home (daily activities), sports halls (to monitor the performance) or clinics (to diagnose and monitor different diseases). The advantages of electrogoniometry are that it is noninvasive, it is well accepted by the participants in experimental tests and no dangerous effects on the human body are registered [1][2][3][4][5][6]. The surveys concerning the patient satisfaction following TKR surgery suggest that the ability of more knee flexion influences a patient's view of the outcome, similar with the results presented in [51].…”

“…The maximum value of flexion-extension angle of left knee varies from 45.01°, related to the speed of 2.5 km/h until 78.6°, value related to the speed of 10 km/h (Figure 10). In this diagram, it can be observed the increase of the maximum value of the flexion-extension angle with the increase of the treadmill incline [6]. Thus, the maximum value of the flexion-extension angle increases by 10-12° from 0° inclination to 15° inclination in the case of speed of 2.5 km/h and 5 km/h and increases by 15-20° for the tests performed at 7 km/h and 10 km/h, respectively.…”

“…The techniques of objective monitoring of human gait take into account various devices and equipment used for the acquisition and processing of experimental data targeting a wide range of gait parameters [2]. Numerous scientific papers have highlighted the main advantages wearable sensors systems that can be worn by the subject to measure and analyze various parameters of normal or pathological human walking [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. Using portable sensors, it is possible to monitor the disorders of the pathological gait, as well as the improvement of gait during the rehabilitation period [1,6,11].…”

“…Numerous scientific papers have highlighted the main advantages wearable sensors systems that can be worn by the subject to measure and analyze various parameters of normal or pathological human walking [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. Using portable sensors, it is possible to monitor the disorders of the pathological gait, as well as the improvement of gait during the rehabilitation period [1,6,11]. Research papers studied healthy subjects [7,9] or evaluated aspects related to the rehabilitation of joint movements after surgery, in prosthetic or orthotic patients [12][13][14][15][16][17], to evaluate the gait stability [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] or to identify movement kinematic differences in patient populations, such as patients with osteoarthritis [11,13,20,24,25], patients with multiple sclerosis disease [11], with Parkinson's disease [3] or affected by stroke [26], compared to healthy subjects.…”