Date of Award

2002

Document Type

Thesis - Restricted

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Biomedical Engineering

First Advisor

Harris, Gerald F.

Second Advisor

Ackman, Jeffrey

Third Advisor

Bachschmidt, Rebecca

Abstract

I entered the undergraduate biomedical engineering program at Marquette University because of an article I had read about prosthetics in high school. The idea of mimicking a natural limb and its movements with metal and plastic were fascinating to me. So when it came time to look for a graduate project, I set out looking for one that dealt with prosthetics. Dr. Harris seemed more than willing to try and accommodate my request, as prosthetics was a newer area for him as well. Gait analysis seems to go hand in hand with lower extremity prosthetics, and I later found out that only limited research had been done on children with a prosthetic limb. The use of impulse was very limited in gait analysis. I think that impulse is an important metric because it relates what kind of impact the limb is encountering during gait, and I wanted to explore this further. The purpose of this thesis project was twofold: to determine if a standard force plate was sensitive enough to detect changes in impulses during prosthetic gait, and to see if there was significant differences in the impulse values depending on what type of prosthetic foot was used.

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