A preliminary study on a new lightweight and flexible sensing sock for gait analysis

Early diagnosis and the possibility of effective monitoring during therapy are the keys to better treat patients and reduce healthcare costs in many pathologies such as neurodegen-erative or musculoskeletal disorders. Gait analysis represents a useful and minimally invasive way to detect these diseases and to control the progress of pathologies. Current systems, however, are obtrusive, not usable in daily context, expensive and often require an expert operator. For these reasons, we developed Ephi SPA, a sock for gait analysis sensorized through textile pressure sensors. The developed prototype is described and preliminarily tested on a healthy subject to demonstrate the capability to detect signals related to the subject’s gait cycle.