Is Idiopathic Toe Walking Really Idiopathic?

NewsBot · Mar 30, 2023

Ankle Kinematics Characterization in Children with Idiopathic Toe Walking: Does the Foot Model Change the Clinical Evaluation?
Paolo Brasiliano et al
Healthcare (Basel). 2023 Mar 16;11(6):873.

Idiopathic toe walking (ITW) is a gait deviation characterized by forefoot contact with the ground, sometimes observed in children, that alters ankle kinematics, possibly leading to health-related issues. When studying foot and ankle gait deviations, the adoption of a single-segment foot model entails a significant simplification of foot and ankle movement, and thus may potentially mask some important foot dynamics. Differences in ankle kinematics between single- (conventional gait model, PiG, or Davis) and multi-segment (Oxford foot model, OFM) foot models were investigated in children with ITW. Fourteen participants were enrolled in the study and underwent instrumented gait analysis. Children were asked to walk barefoot and while wearing a foot orthosis that modified the ankle movement pattern toward a more physiological one without blocking foot intrinsic motion. ITW gait abnormalities, e.g., the absence of heel rocker and the presence of anticipated forefoot rocker, were found/not found according to the foot model. Walking conditions significantly interacted with the foot model effect. Finally, the different characterization of gait abnormalities led to a different classification of ITW, with a possible impact on the clinical evaluation. Due to its closer adhesion to ankle anatomy and to its sensitivity to ITW peculiarities, OFM may be preferable for instrumented gait analysis in this population.
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NewsBot · May 3, 2023

Dense & Attention Convolutional Neural Networks for Toe Walking Recognition
Junde Chen, Rahul Soangra, Marybeth Grant-Beuttler, Y A Nanehkaran, Yuxin Wen
IEEE Trans Neural Syst Rehabil Eng. 2023 May 2;PP. doi: 10.1109/TNSRE.2023.3272362. Online ahead of print.

Idiopathic toe walking (ITW) is a gait disorder where children's initial contacts show limited or no heel touch during the gait cycle. Toe walking can lead to poor balance, increased risk of falling or tripping, leg pain, and stunted growth in children. Early detection and identification can facilitate targeted interventions for children diagnosed with ITW. This study proposes a new one-dimensional (1D) Dense & Attention convolutional network architecture, which is termed as the DANet, to detect idiopathic toe walking. The dense block is integrated into the network to maximize information transfer and avoid missed features. Further, the attention modules are incorporated into the network to highlight useful features while suppressing unwanted noises. Also, the Focal Loss function is enhanced to alleviate the imbalance sample issue. The proposed approach outperforms other methods and obtains a superior performance. It achieves a test recall of 88.91% for recognizing idiopathic toe walking on the local dataset collected from real-world experimental scenarios. To ensure the scalability and generalizability of the proposed approach, the algorithm is further validated through the publicly available datasets, and the proposed approach achieves an average precision, recall, and F1-Score of 89.34%, 91.50%, and 92.04%, respectively. Experimental results present a competitive performance and demonstrate the validity and feasibility of the proposed approach.
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NewsBot · May 9, 2023

Stepping Beyond Efficacy: Understanding the User Experience of Wearables for Children with Idiopathic Toe Walking in the Natural Setting
LouAnne Boyd et al
Human Factors in Healthcare; Volume 3, June 2023, 100044

Highlights
•Important first-time look at family experiences regarding a device for rehabilitation.
•Insights on wearables for physical therapy has a broader impact to other wearables.
•Novel application of Machine Learning to classify gait.
•Provides an important step to ensure wearable devices are usable, acceptable, and adopted.
•This work explores these vital human factor parameters.
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Idiopathic Toe Walking is an atypical gait pattern that results in limited mobility, pain, and higher risk of falling. Current therapeutic interventions lack the ability to be implemented outside the clinic or lab. Beyond this, it is unclear if gait analysis and real-time feedback is technologically feasible to attain within a user's natural environment. In our research we aimed to understand the child and parent participants’ experience of an innovative wearable system. We surveyed children and parents after the deployment of a functional prototype with real time vibrotactile feedback for awareness of toe walking via a shoe insert paired with a smartphone for visual feedback. Findings revealed insights into design considerations for wearable technologies for children. Factors such as comfort of using the system (physically and psychologically), child's perception and response to the vibrotactile feedback, and children and parents’ perception of reduced fall risk, pain, and stigma are discussed.
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NewsBot · May 16, 2023

Feature Selection using Random Forest Classifier
for Foot Strike Event Detection in Toe Walkers
Meghna Desai, Viral Kapadia
Computational Intelligence and Machine Learning; e-ISSN: 2582-7464 Vol-4, Issue-1, April 2023

Automated Gait event identification of Foot Strike (FS) and Foot Off (FO) in pathological gait data, can be time saving in comparison to
conventional manual annotations done currently. Identification of FS and FO allows breaking walking trials into gait cycles and hence aids
in comparison of gait parameters like joint angles, forces and moments across gait cycles. Automated Gait Event Detection is also useful in
development of wearable sensor devices and robotic systems that assist gait. Researchers have proposed several automatic gait event
detection algorithms based on kinematic parameters and systematic study of the literature suggests specific parameters to have higher
contribution in identification of FS event in all common pathological gait patterns. We used Random Forest Classifier Feature selection
technique to identify high contributing features in FS event in toe walking pediatric pathological gait dataset and the results suggest high
similarity in selected features by the machine learning technique with those suggested by popular event detection algorithms based on
kinematic parameters for pathological gait. Hence we conclude that RFC feature selection is suitable for feature selection in toe walkers gait
dataset for event detection purpose.
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NewsBot · May 16, 2023

Some children with idiopathic toe walking display sensory processing difficulties but not all: a systematic review
Jack H Donne et al
Acta Paediatr. 2023 May 10

Aim: Idiopathic toe walking (ITW) is a diagnosis for children who toe walk without another diagnosis known to cause toe walking. Recent research has suggested that children with ITW may have mild motor planning challenges and sensory processing differences. The primary aim of this systematic review was to determine whether children diagnosed with ITW have differences in their sensory processing compared to typically developing children. Secondary aims included determining how sensory processing was assessed in this population and documenting the broad clinometric and psychometric properties of any assessment tools.

Methods: MEDLINE, CINAHL, AMED and Embase were searched for relevant literature in English. Studies were eligible for inclusion if they described children aged 3 and 18 with idiopathic toe walking and reported a sensory processing domain.

Results: Twelve articles met the inclusion criteria; however, only two papers included data permitting meta-analysis. Meta-analyses of vibration perception threshold using a random effect model were not significant (P=0.31). Other data were synthesised by narrative and showed a high heterogeneity across multiple sensory processing domains.

Conclusion: This study highlights that despite children with ITW often conceptualised as possessing sensory processing challenges, there is little evidence supporting this theory. Further research on sensory processing in children with this gait pattern is necessary.
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Is Idiopathic Toe Walking Really Idiopathic?

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Online survey on idiopathic toe walking and Quality of Life

Online survey on idiopathic toe walking and Quality of Life

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Idiopathic toe walking and sensory processing dysfunction

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Is Idiopathic Toe Walking Really Idiopathic?

NewsBot The Admin that posts the news.

NewsBot The Admin that posts the news.

NewsBot The Admin that posts the news.

NewsBot The Admin that posts the news.

NewsBot The Admin that posts the news.

Unraveling the mysteries of idiopathic toe walking (Melbourne)

Neuropsychiatric symptoms and problems among children with idiopathic toe-walking

The Prevalence and Course of Idiopathic Toe-Walking in 5-Year-Old Children

Online survey on idiopathic toe walking and Quality of Life

Online survey on idiopathic toe walking and Quality of Life

Idiopathic toewalking in children

Idiopathic toe walking and sensory processing dysfunction

Share This Page

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