The Result of Mid-High-Heeled Footwear on Young Adult Women
Figure 3
u Schematic view of the wedge used as the heel with dimensions . The maximum height of the wedge was slightly larger than the heel effect it had on the foot .
wedges was chosen to match an average heel height . According to a survey conducted by the American Podiatric Medical Association , a heel of 2 inches ( app . 5 cm ) was reported as too high by 20 % of women , whereas a heel of 3 inches ( app . 7.5 cm ) was reported as too high by 54 % of women [ 59 ] . For a foot of average length , our setup would provide a heel of approximately 6 – 6.5 cm ( 2.5 inches ) high , which should be in the acceptable range for most women .
2.7 . Data Analysis
Dedicated algorithms were developed to detect on-skin fiducial markers and calculate the parameters for evaluating changes in posture and balance according to current recommendations [ 42,60,61,62 ]. Analysis of the measurement data was performed using IMP ’ s proprietary FRAMES programming environment [ 63 ], an extensible framework used for different tasks involving point cloud data . It was written in C ++ with minimal use of third-party programming libraries . The processing path consisted in : filtering measurement noise using FRAMES built-in algorithms , using a custom algorithm for automatic detection of the circular markers on the surface of the skin developed for this experiment , and methods for estimating parameters connected with posture .
Filtering algorithms were used to remove parts of the measurement that did not represent the surface of the back , and remove measured surface edges , prone to noise because of the nature of the measurement technique .
The algorithm for marker detection was based on an analysis of intensity ( grayscale value ), as white markers were easy to distinguish from the surrounding skin . Since some over-exposed erroneous points appeared in the measurement , additional conditions had to be checked to ensure that a particular group of high-intensity points is circular , and its radius is within the expected values range . Only the positively verified point groups were regarded as marker areas . For each marker , its ( x , y , z ) center was calculated , and a textual name label was assigned based on the marker ’ s position on the body .
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