Low back pain (LBP) is the most common symptom leading to hospitalization and medical assistance. In the US, LBP is the fifth most prevalent case for visiting hospitals. Approximately 2.06 million LBP incidents were reported during the timeline between 2004 and 2008. Globally, LBP occurrence increased by almost 200 million from 1990 to 2017. This problem is further implicated by physical and financial constraints that impact the individual’s quality of life. The medical cost exceeded $87.6 billion, and the lifetime prevalence was 84%. This indicates that the majority of people in the US will experience this symptom. Also, LBP limits Activities of Daily Living (ADL) and possibly affects the gait and postural stability. Prior studies indicated that LBP patients have slower gait speed and postural instability. To alleviate this symptom, the epidural injection is prescribed to treat pain and improve mobility function. To evaluate the effectiveness of LBP epidural injection intervention, gait and posture stability was investigated before and after the injection. While these factors are the fundamental indicator of LBP improvement, ADL is an element that needs to be significantly considered. The physical activity level depicts a person’s dynamic movement during the day, it is essential to gather activity level that supports monitoring chronic conditions, such as LBP, osteoporosis, and falls. The objective of this study was to assess the effects of Epidural Steroid Injection (ESI) on LBP and related gait and postural stability in the pre and post-intervention status. As such, the second objective was to assess the influence of ESI on LBP, and how it influences the participant’s ADL physical activity level. The results indicated that post-ESI intervention has significantly improved LBP patient’s gait and posture stability, however, there was insufficient evidence to determine the significant disparity in the physical activity levels. In conclusion, ESI depicts significant positive effects on LBP patients’ gait and postural parameters, however, more verification is required to indicate a significant effect on ADL physical activity levels.

With more people falling every year it is more important to continue to track everyday activity as well as follow the progress that someone is making over time. As well as at risk subjects, athletes are also wanting to track their activity as well as improve in finer control of their motions and abilities. To improve someone’s balance, strength, flexibility, and more someone can now start to use different biological sensors to help live a healthier and better lifestyle. To build different sensors requires materials that are comfortable to wear and accurate in collecting data. Graphene has been considered a wonder material that is used in many different applications which allow circuits and devices to use the flexible and durable material to conduct electricity. This paper shows multiple different tests and 36 trials of using graphene as a device which measures pressure that can be used to analyze gait patterns. These tests involve walking on a dual force plate treadmill for 90 continuous seconds with the graphene strip in the heel of the shoe wirelessly transmitting data to be recorded. The initial tests show that graphene will pick up noise and that graphene can start to deteriorate without proper protection. When looking at subject 1 there is less than .01 seconds of error between the graphene circuit and the ground truth. The ground truth was collected simultaneously, and the t-tests and ANOVA tests showed that there is no statistical difference between the graphene system and the ground truth. These tests also showed a 96.7% reproducibility score. There are limitations as seen in the later subjects, but these limitations can be overcome by further protecting the graphene and replacing the strip when it starts to show signs of deterioration which will allow graphene to be used in everyday bio wearable devices.

Gait training therapies are methods for improving the walking stability of individuals who have difficulty walking, whether it is due to injury or neuromuscular conditions. Perturbation training that causes individuals to correct their balance and actively improve their stability could potentially lead to longer term benefits for those with unstable gait. Subjects had the medial lateral movement of their center of mass measured through motion-tracking software (D-Flow 3 and Vicon Nexus 2.2). Perturbation training completed with the GRAIL treadmill randomly triggered medial-lateral sway perturbations of 3 cm a total of fifteen times throughout a five minute training period. Data collected to compare baseline, post-training, and one week follow-up dynamic stabilities were recorded over three minutes without any perturbations. There were no statistically significant differences when comparing the results of all subjects at each instance of data collection with each other. Thus, the perturbation training had no significant impact on the dynamic stability of gait. Major limitations that lend to the inconclusive nature of this study include a small sample size, no repetitions, and only one round of training. Further work can be done to better assess the potential impacts of perturbation training on walking stability for therapeutic use.