Human foot plantar surface shape change during gait

Abstract

Accurate shapes of the human foot plantar surface for various phases of gait (heel-strike, midstance and toe-off) are necessary to determine the physical features of the foot in motion. This type of information may be important in the understanding of the movement of the foot in the confined spaces inside shoes. Currently, there is no accurate method available to study the shape of the plantar aspect of the foot inside shoes during gait. Therefore it is necessary to develop a technique to determine plantar foot shape change of bare-footed gaits. The results show that the method developed can be used to obtain accurate measurement of the foot plantar surface change during gait. These measurements can be used to analyse the plantar surface characteristics which may be useful for the design of shoes.