TIBIAL SHOCK MEASURED WITH BONE AND SKIN MOUNTED TRANSDUCERS

The purpose of this study was to assess the value of superficial trans ducer mounting to measure tibial shock during locomotion. Surface (SMT ) and bone mounted transducers (BMT) simultaneously recorded axial tib ial acceleration in five subjects who ran at 4.5 ms(-1). SMT produced inconsistent recording across the subjects both in the time and freque ncy domains. In two subjects, SMT signals provided close approximation of BMT signals, some distortion occurred in one subject while severe distortions were observed in the other two subjects. The present resul ts established that SMT could not be used directly to quantify the sho ck transmitted through the tibia during running. However, frequency tr ansformation of SMT recordings produced encouraging results; the trans formed SMT signals mimicked the signals recorded with the bone mounted transducer.