The simple act of walking may not be what it used to for people who suffer a stroke. Loss of control on one side of the body may turn walking into a Herculean task.
Colleen Monaghan, third-year PhD student (from) Ireland, Department of Biomedical Signals and Systems explains, They are unable to push-off like 'healthy' people i.e pushing from the ankle just before lifting the foot off the ground and therefore they pull from the hip which makes the leg stay straight....they do not use the ankle much. Or they may have a 'drop-foot' where the toes drag along the ground when they should be pointing upwards as the leg moves fowards.
Colleen's work is based on functional electrical stimulation; an apt example is the product Abtronic which uses electricity to build up muscles. Also the Drop-foot stimulator which is now implantable and being used for patients in Het Roessingh (a rehabilitation centre in Enschede). 'My research entails applying electrical stimulation to the calf muscles to make walking more efficient. Calf muscle stimulation should cause the heel to rise, the toes to press the ground with more force and also bend the knee to prepare the leg for swing, she explains.'
Stimulation experiments are conducted in the gait lab of RRD (Roessingh Research and Development) and Colleen measures biomechanics using marker balls - they are placed on the patients body and cameras detect infrared reflections from the markers as the patient moves which is captured in the form of dots on a computer. These dots are then connected to obtain a stick figure of that person. 'Using these stick-figures, I can calculate ankle and knee angle,' she clarifies.
After obtaining a Bachelor degree in Biomedical Engineering from University of Ulster, Jordanstown in Ireland Colleen came to the Netherlands. 'Well, my boyfriend is Dutch (we met on holiday a couple of years ago). Also, my professor was connected to the European network of NeuralPro which comprises a group of universities from different parts of Europe conducting research in Neural Prostheses, of which the UT is also a part. I came here for the first time in 1999 to visit my boyfriend and felt at home; the weather is quite similar although it is drier here. Usually foreign students interviewed in this column state the weather as the worst part of living here.....but I quite like it.'
Hometown : Belfast
Languages known : English, Dutch
Favourite Food : Chicken Saté....preferably made by my boyfriend!
Favourite music : U2 Favourite
Movie : Goodfellas & Heat
Extracurricular activities : Taekwando, Horseriding
Best part of living in NL : Cycling to work
Worst part of living in NL : Traffic jams
