AsianScientist (Jun. 28, 2016) – 3D motion caption systems are usually associated with the sets of movies like Lord of the Rings. Now, researchers in Japan have used the same video recording system in the lab to analyze the way pregnant women walk.
Their results, published in Applied Ergonomics, verify the existence of the ‘pregnancy waddle’ and enable future studies on how everyday tasks can be made safer and more comfortable for pregnant women.
“Biomechanics studies like ours of how humans move are valuable for many things, like making our built environments safer or designing mobility skills,” said lead author Professor Koichi Shinkoda from the Graduate School of Biomedical and Health Sciences at Hiroshima University.
Previous body scan analysis studies almost exclusively used men of European descent to create mathematical models of the human body. One study in 1996 used pregnant women in Canada, but the imaging technology available at the time was vastly outdated.
In this study, the researchers studied how pregnant women adjust their movements during daily life, like rising from a chair or changing direction while walking.
They brought eight women into the research lab at three different times during their pregnancy. Using infrared cameras for 3D motion capture, their movements were compared against seven non-pregnant women. After the videos were analyzed, the researchers created a virtual model to represent the average pregnant woman.
The model verifies the scientific community’s current understanding of why pregnant women walk differently. Even during the first trimester, a pregnant woman’s center of mass is farther forward; she is less likely to lean backwards while standing and bend her hips while walking. This combination can cause pregnant women to trip or lose their balance more easily.
Indeed, accidental falls cause 10-25 percent of injuries during pregnancy, and a pregnant woman’s risk of falling is the same as that of a 70-year-old woman. Computer models like this allow researchers to study the limits of what types of movements are safe without putting research participants at risk, the researchers say.
“We want to find the ideal way for new mothers to carry their baby, what exercises are most effective to return to non-pregnant fitness, and what physical postures are best for work in the home or office,” said first author Yasuyo Sunaga, a doctoral student in Shinkoda’s lab.
The article can be found at: Sunaga et al. (2016) Estimation of Inertial Parameters of the Lower Trunk in Pregnant Japanese Women: A Longitudinal Comparative Study and Application to Motion Analysis.
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Source: Hiroshima University; Photo: Shutterstock.
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