Background: Motion characteristics of CoP (Centre of Pressure, the point of application of the resultant ground reaction force acting on the plate) are useful for foot type characteristics detection. To date, only few studies have investigated the nonlinear characteristics of CoP velocity and acceleration during the stance phase. The aim of this study is to investigate whether CoP regularity is different among four foot types (normal foot, pes valgus, hallux valgus and pes cavus); this might be useful for classification and diagnosis of foot injuries and diseases. To meet this goal, sample entropy, a measure of time-series regularity, was used to quantify the CoP regularity of four foot types.
Methods: One hundred and sixty five subjects that had the same foot type bilaterally (48 subjects with healthy feet, 22 with pes valgus, 47 with hallux valgus, and 48 with pes cavus) were recruited for this study. A Footscan® system was used to collect CoP data when each subject walked at normal and steady speed. The velocity and acceleration in medial-lateral (ML) and anterior-posterior (AP) directions, and resultant velocity and acceleration were derived from CoP. The sample entropy is the negative natural logarithm of the conditional probability that a subseries of length m that matches pointwise within a tolerance r also matches at the next point. This was used to quantify variables of CoP velocity and acceleration of four foot types. The parameters r (the tolerance) and m (the matching length) for sample entropy calculation have been determined by an optimal method.
Results: It has been found that in order to analyze all CoP parameters of velocity and acceleration during the stance phase of walking gait, for each variable there is a different optimal r value. On the contrary, the value m=4 is optimal for all variables.Sample entropies of both velocity and acceleration in AP direction were highly correlated with their corresponding resultant variables for r>0.91. The sample entropy of the velocity in AP direction was moderately correlated with the one of the acceleration in the same direction (r≥0.673), as well as with the resultant acceleration (r≥0.660). The sample entropy of resultant velocity was moderately correlated with the one of the acceleration in AP direction, as well as with the resultant acceleration (for the both r≥0.689). Moderate correlations were found between variables for the left foot and their corresponding variables for the right foot.Sample entropies of AP velocity, resultant velocity, AP acceleration, and resultant acceleration of the right foot as well as AP velocity and resultant velocity of the left foot were, respectively, significantly different among the four foot types.
Conclusions: It can be concluded that the sample entropy of AP velocity (or the resultant velocity) of the left foot, ML velocity, resultant velocity, ML acceleration and resultant acceleration could serve for evaluation of foot types or selection of appropriate footwear.