Biomechanical Analysis Systems
SPARO
Sponsored by the Defense Health Agency, FTL’s SPARO (Sensorized Prosthetic Alignment Read-Out) provides clinicians and researchers a tool that enables quantitative measurements of prosthetic alignment and the effects it has on the rest of the body’s motions and dynamics through whole body gait and movement analysis.
Cutting-edge wearable motion capture technology provides immediate feedback to the prosthetist through a custom software interface, providing load transfer and kinematics data between the residual limb and external environment, along with whole body modeling. These objective measurements enable data-driven adjustments that will not only arrive at the best results but will get there faster than traditional methods by using machine learning in concert with SPARO’s proprietary alignment guide in a virtual 3D environment.
This new ability to precisely align prosthetic components also enables apples to apples comparisons of different prosthetic limbs, across specific patient populations. Further, full body biomechanics analysis can be performed using SPARO’s inexpensive precision motion capture technology. SPARO is the cutting edge of prosthetic limb adjustment technology.
SoundFit
SoundFit is a patented ultrasonic tool that monitors and records relative motion between a prosthesis socket and the bone within a remaining limb after amputation. Accurate and quantitative measurement of relative bone-to-prosthesis location during prescribed exercises such as walking for lower limb, or lateral arm raises for an upper limb, enables custom, comfortable fitment and high performance mechanical energy transfer, filling the knowledge gap that currently exists when trying to assess the performance of a socket interface.
There is a clear industry need for determining acceptable ranges for socket performance metrics values. These metrics may include sagittal/frontal range of motion and peak velocity during an activity, which correlate with interface stiffness and damping. These performance metrics, derived with FTL’s SoundFit, allow analysis of industry-wide statistical trends for direct application by prosthetics clinicians.
FTL’s SoundFit serves as a guide during the fitment process, allowing comparison of a socket’s performance to trends seen in the community of subjects having similar impairments, physiology and mobility. Driving the socket fitment with data rather than subjectivity will help to enhance a patient’s interaction with the world via a prosthesis, and ultimately will improve the patient’s quality of life.
For more information, please check out FTL’s brochure about the next generation of SoundFit, titled FoCUS! FoCUS is currently deployed in test labs across the country.
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