• The Journal of Korean Physical Therapy
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.112-117
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• 2015

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a task-specific obstacle crossing rehabilitation program on functional gait ability in patients with cerebellar ataxia. Overall, we sought to provide ataxia-specific locomotor rehabilitation guidelines for use in clinical practice based on quantitative evidence using relevant analysis of gait kinematics including valid clinical tests. Methods: Patients with cerebellar disease (n=13) participated in obstacle crossing training focusing on maintenance of dynamic balance and posture, stable transferring of body weight, and production of coordinated limb movements for 8 weeks, 2 times per week, 90 minutes per session. Throughout the training of body weight transfer, the instructions emphasized conscious perception and control of the center of body stability, trunk and limb alignment, and stepping kinematics during the practice of each walking phase. Results: According to the results, compared with pre-training data, foot clearance, pre-&post-obstacle distance, delay time, and total obstacle crossing time were increased after intervention. In addition, body COM measures indicated that body sway and movement variability, therefore posture stability during obstacle crossing, showed improvement after training. Based on these results, body sway was reduced and stepping pattern became more consistent during obstacle crossing gait after participation in patients with cerebellar ataxia. Conclusion: Findings of this study suggest that task-relevant obstacle crossing training may have a beneficial effect on recovery of functional gait ability in patients with cerebellar disease.

• Physical Therapy Korea
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.9-18
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• 2013

The study aimed to compare the effect of the treadmill walking training combined with obstacle-crossing (TWT-OC) and treadmill walking training (TWT) on the walking function of patients with chronic stroke. 29 subjects volunteered to participate in this study; they were randomly assigned to either TWT-OC group (15 subjects) or TWT group (14 subjects). Subjects from the TWT-OC group underwent a treadmill walking combined with obstacles-crossing for 30 minutes daily, three days a week for four weeks, whereas subjects from the TWT group received only a treadmill walking. The 10 m walk test (10MWT), 6-min walk test (6MWT), berg balance scale (BBS), timed up and go test (TUG), activities-specific balance confidence-Korean version (ABC-K), and walking ability questionnaire (WAQ) were measured before and after the 4-week training. The TWT-OC group showed significantly better functional mobility of walking and balance measured by 6MWT (p<.01), BBS (p<.01), and TUG scores (p<.05) when compared with those of the TWT group. Further, within-group comparison showed significant improvement in all variables (p<.01) except for 10MWT. These findings suggest that the TWT-OC and TWT may be helpful for improving the walking function of patients with chronic stroke, and the TWT-OC has probably more favorable outcomes for chronic stroke, however, further trials with wider range of subjects are warranted for generalization and clinical relevance.

• Physical Therapy Korea
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.35-41
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• 2019

Background: Obstacle training affects lower limb muscle activity, balance, reducing the risk of falls, and making gait more stable. Objects: This study aimed to investigate the effects of aquatic and ground obstacle training on balance and muscle activity in patients with chronic stroke. Methods: The study subjects included 30 patients with stroke, who were divided into aquatic ($n_1=15$) and ground ($n_2=15$) groups. Groups underwent obstacle training three times per week, 30 min per session, for six weeks that went as follows: walking over sites with the paralyzed leg, stepping onto and down from a box step, and walking over obstacles with the non-paralyzed leg. Results: The experimental results were obtained by comparing muscle activity. Activity of the rectus femoris, biceps femoris, tibialis anterior, and gastrocnemius were significantly increased in the aquatic group (p<.05). Activity of the biceps femoris and tibialis anterior were significantly increased in the ground group (p<.05); however, the rectus femoris and gastrocnemius were not significantly different. In the comparison of maximal distance regarding the limits of stability, it was significantly increased on the non-affected side, affected side, and anterior and posterior distance in the aquatic group (p<.05). It was significantly increased in the non-affected side and anterior and posterior distance the ground group (p<.05); however, maximal distance on the affected side distance was not significantly different. Conclusion: Gait training with aquatic and ground obstacles is effective for improving balance and gait ability of patients with stroke. However, it was more effective for the aquatic group than for the ground group.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Physical Medicine
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.55-62
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• 2019

PURPOSE: This study examined the muscle activity while stepping over obstacles with various heights and widths to provide basic data for training and preventing falls. METHODS: Fifteen normal young adults (seven males and eight females) were recruited. The participants walked on a 5m walkway with six obstacles. The heights of obstacles were 0%, 10%, and 40% of the subject's leg length, and the width of the obstacles was 7cm and 14cm. The participants traversed the course twice per obstacle. The muscle activities of the soleus, tibialis anterior (TA), vastus medialis (VM), and vastus lateralis (VL) were measured using surface electromyography. A Mann-Whitney test and Kruskal-Wallis test were used to examine the differences between obstacles. RESULTS: The muscle activities of the VL and the soleus of the stance leg and lead leg after crossing over the obstacles increased with increasing width, and there were significant differences in muscle activities between obstacle width (p<.05) except for the muscle activity of TA of the stance leg after crossing over the obstacles. A significant difference in muscle activities was observed according to the height of the obstacles with 14 cm (p<.05) except for the muscle activity of the VL, soleus of the leading leg, and TA of the stance leg CONCLUSION: The role of the VL and Soleus increased with increasing obstacle width, and the overall muscle activities of the lower extremities increased with increasing obstacle height. These results can be used to suggest a program to prevent falls.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Surveying, Geodesy, Photogrammetry and Cartography
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• v.39 no.6
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• pp.599-607
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• 2021

Street-view images, which are omnidirectional scenes centered on a specific location on the road, can provide various obstacle information for the pedestrians. Pedestrian network data for the navigation services should reflect the up-to-date obstacle information to ensure the mobility of pedestrians, including people with disabilities. In this study, the object detection model was trained for the bollard as a major obstacle in Seoul using street-view images and a deep learning algorithm. Also, a process for updating information about the presence and number of bollards as obstacle properties for the crosswalk node through spatial matching between the detected bollards and the pedestrian nodes was proposed. The missing crosswalk information can also be updated concurrently by the proposed process. The proposed approach is appropriate for crowdsourcing data as the model trained using the street-view images can be applied to photos taken with a smartphone while walking. Through additional training with various obstacles captured in the street-view images, it is expected to enable efficient information update about obstacles on the road.

• Journal of Digital Contents Society
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.279-289
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• 2011

The latest hardware and software techniques are combined to give safe walking guidance and convenient service of realtime walking assistance system for visually impaired person. This system consists of obstacle detection and perception, place recognition, and sign recognition for pedestrian can safely walking to arrive at their destination. In this paper, we exploit the sign object detection system in subway station for sign recognition that one of the important factors of walking assistance system. This paper suggest the adaptive feature map that can be robustly extract the sign object region from complexed environment with light and noise. And recognize a sign using fast zernike moment features which is invariant under translation, rotation and scale of object during walking. We considered three types of signs as arrow, restroom, and exit number and perform the training and recognizing steps through adaboost classifier. The experimental results prove that our method can be suitable and stable for real-time system through yields on the average 87.16% stable detection rate and 20 frame/sec of operation time for three types of signs in 5000 images of sign database.