Advanced diagnostics will point the way

[unhappycamper]

Army Staff Sgt, Felix Chavez navigates the gait lab at the Center for the Intrepid.


Advanced diagnostics will point the way
By Leo Shane III, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Monday, December 3, 2007

Researchers and trainers at the Center for the Intrepid repeat the mantra that everything they do is designed to help amputees reach their full potential.

Now, they have to figure out what that means.

The center’s first-floor research labs, in full operation for just the last few months, are perhaps the most important features in the long-term treatment of amputees and limb-salvage patients.

They include a cavernous gait lab — a high-tech obstacle course to record subjects’ every step — and a 21-foot virtual reality dome. Both are unique diagnostic tools, designed to give prosthetics experts and trainers new ways to evaluate and improve patients’ movements.

“It’s a whole new way to see differences between how amputees walk,” Lt. Col. Rachel Evans, research director for the center on Fort Sam Houston near San Antonio.

The gait lab uses marble-sized sensors taped to patients’ joints with motion-capture cameras to create a digital video of their pace, balance, twists and stumbles — the same technology used in many current sports video games, to capture athletes authentic movements.


Rest of article at: http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=50680