Foot biomechanical modelling to study orthoses influence.

Several pathologies of the foot can be solved simply by adding an orthosis under the patient’s foot. Defining the geometry and the size of such orthosis is key in optimizing its influence on the foot. For example, an orthosis with a heel lift (HL) has an increased height below the heel to force the patient to put his weight on front of the foot. An orthosis with a metatarsal bar associated with under capital extension of the 1st ray (BAR) has a bump going across the insole and placed below the front of the arch to stabilize the first metatarsal bones and to release the pressure under their heads. Unfortunately, most of the orthoses produced today are not specifically design for a patient. They allow improvements to some degrees but could be more efficient if they were patient specific. We propose to use a patient-specific finite element (FE) foot model to study the influence of such orthoses and to help designing them in a better way, in accordance with the patient’s anatomy and pathology.