Optical-Based Foot Plantar Pressure Measurement System for Potential Application in Human Postural Control...

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Computer Vision
• Human Biomechanics

Background:

• Plantar pressure analysis is crucial for footwear design, biometrics, gait analysis, and diabetes assessment.
• Existing methods may have limitations in capturing dynamic and static pressure distributions.
• Accurate measurement of foot pressure is essential for understanding human posture and identification.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design and evaluate an optical-based system for measuring foot plantar pressure.
• To utilize plantar pressure images for human postural control assessment.
• To enable person identification using extracted static and dynamic features from plantar pressure images.

Main Methods:

• An optical system using digital cameras, an acrylic plate, glossy paper, and LED strips was developed.
• The system captures light deflection caused by plantar pressure to generate color-coded pressure images.
• Static and dynamic features were extracted from these images for analysis and identification.

Main Results:

• The system successfully generated color-coded plantar pressure images.
• A novel posture balance index incorporating magnitude and directional information was proposed.
• For person identification, the system achieved high accuracy with an Area Under the Curve (ROC) of 98.515% and an Equal Error Rate (EER) of 5.8687%.

Conclusions:

• The proposed optical-based plantar pressure measurement system is effective for both postural control evaluation and person identification.
• The system demonstrates high efficiency and accuracy, offering a promising solution for biometric and biomechanical applications.
• Further research can explore its application in clinical settings and advanced gait analysis.