Skeletal and Clinical Effects of Exoskeletal Assisted - Gait

Abstract : The purpose of this project is to study the effects on bone health of exoskeleton-assisted gait in individuals with a complete spinal cord injury. Advanced biomechanical models of human locomotion are utilized to estimate the mechanical effects of the dynamic loading of the bone structures that takes place during exoskeleton-assisted gait. The estimated maximum energy equivalent strain is studied as a potential proxy of bone adaptation and correlated with high-resolution peripheral quantitative computed tomography data and with clinical measures (e.g. biomarkers of inflammation such as C-reactive protein and IL-6) that are collected longitudinally. The work carried out by the research team until now has been focused on the development of advanced biomechanical models. The research team is now scheduling data collections in study volunteers to start the experimental part of the project.