Normal pressures and reliability of the Gaitview® system in healthy adults

BACKGROUND: Each plantar pressure measurement system has a different accuracy and reliability, which is required to establish a range of normal values and determine the reliability. OBJECTIVES: To determine normal pressures with the Gaitview(®) system and assess its reliability. STUDY DESIGN: Single-group repeated measures. METHODS: Dynamic barefoot plantar pressure data were obtained in 30 healthy young participants. In each session, three trials were recorded by one examiner for each foot using the two-step gait initiation method, which was repeated by another examiner the same day. One week later, all of the procedures were repeated. Time-integral mean pressures were measured for each of eight anatomical foot regions. The foot contact time (CT) and the time-integral mean angle of the center of pressure (COP) were also measured. RESULTS: The greatest time-integral mean pressures were seen under the medial and lateral heel. The mean CT was 0.9 sec for both feet, and the time-integral mean angle of the COP was 9.3° for the right foot and 6.6° for the left. The intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) ranged from 0.69 to 0.97, and the coefficient of variation (CoV) from 9.9 to 59.97% for all parameters. CONCLUSIONS: These findings indicate that the Gaitview(®) system demonstrates good to moderate reliability. CLINICAL RELEVANCE: The Gaitview(®) AFA-50 system (alFOOTs, Seoul, Republic of Korea) has been used by clinicians in Korea, but has not been investigated in an independent study. Therefore, this study established a range of normal values and determined the reliability of the Gaitview(®) AFA-50 system.