Can we use treadmills for real-time optimization of ankle foot orthoses?

We investigated whether the effects of ankle foot orthoses (AFOs) and AFO-tuning using incremented heel height is comparable between overground and treadmill walking in healthy adults. Results of this study indicate that small but consistent differences between treadmill and overground walking exist, but the effect of AFOs and AFO-tuning is independent of overground versus treadmill walking. These findings open up the possibility for interactive gait analysis on a treadmill allowing for real-time evaluation of effectiveness of AFOs and AFO-alignment on gait in children with cerebral palsy.