Novel approach for a precise determination of short-time intervals in ankle sprain experiments

The etiology of ankle sprain injury is still under debate. Therefore, diagnoses of ankle inversion experiments play an important role. Recent studies stress the importance of exact time measurements due to the short inversion period of around 70ms. This paper presents a novel approach using the vertical ground reaction force (vGRF) to determine the short-time intervals in ankle sprain experiments, which are present in the form of short periods from the beginning of the movement to its end and short latencies to following signals, e.g. EMG onset of peroneal muscles. We compare our method to electrogoniometry at the ankle which is considered as the gold standard. During the inversion movement the kinematic action at the ankle can be measured with electrogoniometry, whereas the vGRF quantifies the vertical dynamic reaction of the tested subject entirely. We observe a difference of DeltaT(f,0-->g,0)=10+/-0.5ms between the first observable vGRF response and the first observable electrogoniometer response following platform release. The end of the ankle inversion measured with electrogoniometry is DeltaT(f,1-->g,1)=3+/-0.5ms later than the maximal vGRF peak. The potential supplementary (mechanical) information of this novel approach compared to electrogoniometry and its ease of use, may be not only interesting for researchers when studying ankle sprain simulations but also for clinicians when testing functional ankle stability.