clubfoot

Children who are born with clubfoot are often treated with the Ponseti method. Wearing a brace for approximately 4 years is part of this treatment.  However, there are no feedback mechanisms for the parents to know whether they have applied the brace correctly. This causes a lot of insecurity. Therefore, this project focused on finding out if pressure sensors can be used, to indicate correct appliance of a clubfoot brace. To be able to conduct the research we placed pressure sensors in the brace on four different spots. These spots were were indicated as important pressure points by the doctors.  During the tests, we asked the parents to apply the brace in two different ways: correctly and too loose. We could unfortunately not determine a range of correct appliance, however  we could conclude that the used pressure sensors were sensitive enough to measure the pressure within a brace.

With: D. Driessen, P.Ickenroth, C. Janssen and M. Visscher