Article

Quantifying morphological and functional development in children's feet, and
thereby establishing development norms is difficult. In addition to practical
challenges of experimentation on children, measurement equipment like plantar
pressure (PP) platforms are almost exclusively geared towards adult-sized feet.
These PP quantification problems may be exacerbated by typical regional data
analysis techniques, which further reduce spatial resolution. The goal of this
study was to quantify PP distributions in developing children, and also to
compare the results obtained from typical (regional) techniques with those
obtained from a higher-resolution (pixel-level) technique. Ninety-eight children
between four and seven years of age were assessed in a cross-sectional design.
Maximum PP distributions were collected for each child, and these pressures were
linearly regressed against age. Present results agree with previous
investigations in that maximum pressures and maximum pressure changes occurred in
the forefoot. However, results from the present pixel-level technique suggest
that these changes are limited to the central metatarsals, and that regional
methods can suggest significance where none exists in the actual raw
(pixel-level) data, due to signal aliasing and, in particular, to conflation of
regional boundaries. We postulate that increased central metatarsal pressures are
reflective of the coupling between generalised joint laxity decreases and
relatively increasingly inclined central metatarsal bones with age.
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Langue : ANGLAIS