The School of Podiatric Medicine is working on motion capture biomechanics technology at UT Health RGV Multispecialty to help treat patients with mobility problems.
Hafizur Rahman is an assistant professor at the UTRGV School of Podiatric Medicine and the principal investigator and director of applied biomechanics of the lower extremity laboratory (ABLE).
Rahamn explained how the technology is used in the motion capture lab.
“So, the way it works, like, you have the camera [and they] all are [an] integrated camera system and you put the little reflective marker at the different body landmarks,” he said. “And when the camera turns on, we can see the precise location of those markers and then based on their marker position … we can see precisely that how the joint angle, how the range of motion … changes during the dynamic movement.”
Undergraduate Student and Research Assistant Marissa Silva said motion capture cameras are utilized to see how patients walk.
“We use the motion capture cameras to help us with all of our studies,” Silva said. “So, we have the different studies and we utilize the motion capture to determine how they walk.”
She added she learned how to process and observe the patient’s mobility state compared to a healthy patient.
Rahman said patients they worked with either have an amputated limb, ankle deformity or diabetes. He said he takes into account the patients medical history and uses that information to help them recover.
“So, [we] bring the patient and evaluate their gait pattern mechanics and when they go for some kind of treatment, either it could be conservative treatment or it could be a surgical intervention,” Rahman said. “And after that, we see how they are walking and how their walking performance improves.”
He said the ABLE lab brings in patients to understand their walking patterns.
“So, we bring the patient, then we see how they are doing,” Rahman said. “So, it’s mainly looking at their gait pattern mechanics of the walking pattern after any kind of intervention or the treatment.”
To learn more about the School of Podiatric Medicine’s ABLE lab visit its website.
This is Celeste Cruz for Vaquero Radio.
