Development of a pipeline for fem guided plantar insole design

Foot insoles are frequently prescribed in routine clinical practice to prevent or treat foot deformities or functional alterations. Currently adopted procedures for foot insoles manufacturing vary among clinical practitioners and manufacturers and decisions are mainly left to the experience of the ortho-prosthetic technician. Design frequently involves the use of cad-cam systems and, in the best case, static or, better, dynamic plantar pressure maps are considered. On one side they require extensive skilled manual labor and on the other one computer driven technology are adopted. The aim of this study was to propose a pipeline which included plantar pressures dynamic measurement and finite element model simulation of both an insole and foot subject-specific models to guide the insole’s design.