New Affordable Method for Measuring Angular Variations Caused by High Heels on the Sagittal Plane of Feet Joints during Gait

Abstract

Gait is influenced by many factors, but one of the most prominent ones is shoe heel height. Optical motion tracking technology is widely used to analyze high-heeled gait, but it normally involves several high-quality cameras and licensed software, so clinics and researchers with low budgets cannot afford them. This article presents a simple, effective technique to measure the rotation angles on the sagittal plane of the ankle (tibiotalar) and toe (metatarsophalangeal) joints when no shoes (0 cm heel) and high-heeled shoes (2, 6 and 10 cm heels) are worn. The foot’s position was determined by a set of equations based on its geometry and video analysis techniques with free software (Tracker). An evaluation of the spatio-temporal variables confirmed observations from previous studies: increasing heel heights reduces gait cycle length and speed but does not change cadence. The range of movement at the tibiotalar joint progressively narrowed from 28° when no heel height was worn to 9° when a 10 cm heel was used, and these reductions ranged from 30° to 5° for metatarsophalangeal joints, respectively. This aligns with other authors’ previous studies, and confirms that the proposed method accurately measures kinematic ankle–foot set changes when wearing high heels.

Relationship between Swimming Performance, Biomechanical Variables and the Calculated Predicted 1-RM Push-up in Competitive Swimmers

“…In addition, the main lens of the camera was placed at a 75 cm height [ 9 ]. The video recordings of the push-ups were processed with Kinovea software, version 0.8.15 (Joan Charmant & Contrib., kinovea.org, accessed on 25 October 2021) [ 10 ] with a frequency of 240 Hz to ensure the correct calculation of the execution speed [ 11 , 12 , 13 ]. A point marker was put on the head of each swimmer.…”

Automatic Markerless Motion Detector Method against Traditional Digitisation for 3-Dimensional Movement Kinematic Analysis of Ball Kicking in Soccer Field Context

“…Currently, among the tools available to examine kicking movement performance, video analysis originates the most objective and sensitive kinematic metrics, which are not always captured by only visual ratings [5]. In fact, video analysis has been used in some other research fields (e.g., animal displacement detection and analysis), as well as in a range of sports [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. However, while ecologically valid assessment protocols using an on-field multiple-camera setup (such as high-speed action sport cameras [15]) have made it possible to record the three-dimensional and open nature of soccer kicks, flexible/reliable and boosting image processing methods are still required to provide useful information to practitioners in due time [3,16,17].…”