Motion Analysis Engineers Focus on Eliminating Cerebral Palsey Gait

Not many engineers experience the joy that Adam Rozumalski experiences every day, nor is it one that he likely would have expected when he chose to become a biomedical engineer. The work he is doing at the Gillette Children's Hospital's Center for Gait and Motion Analysis is changing the lives of children, one step at a time.

Ellie Goodman is a ten-year-old that appears like any other ten-year-old girl as she plays and dances with friends. Few would guess that she has cerebral palsy, but a year ago her life looked much different. "I couldn't balance," she recalled. "I had people holding my hand when I was little all the time, making sure I didn't fall." That was before she met Rozumalski, a biomedical engineer that makes it his life's work to help children with disabilities regain balance and improve mobility. During gate lab testing, the same technology that is used to animate blockbusters like Avatar allows him to create a precise picture of how kids move.

"It's the same technology they use in Hollywood to capture special effects," Rozumalski explained. "We have the small reflective balls that we can tape on someone's legs and have them walk through our lab."

In movies, they use this technology to mimic human movements and create a person walking or performing stunts. At the gate lab, they use the measurements and compare them against healthy children's movements, using the data to determine how to adjust muscles and bones to help their patients walk easier.

When Ellie first came to the Gait Lab, her left foot would point out. The analysis provided by Rozumalski allowed surgeons to make life-changing corrections, enabling Ellie to walk and run like other children do.

"I look at him and see a life changer," Goodman. "Kids would mock me, how I would walk -- and pretend to be me and lie to me and pretend they weren't. I feel like kids could now accept me as I am now -- and still, kids are getting used to the fact that I can be a normal kid."

Rozumalski has been helping children like Ellie for a dozen years. "I can't imagine doing anything else," he said. "It's such a wonderfully rewarding experience, knowing the work you are doing is really making a difference."