Measuring bone stress during running

Project lead: Dr Hannah Rice

In order to understand bone injuries in runners and military populations we need to measure the stress the bone experiences during each step.

We are working with Engineering to construct a 3D representation of the bones in the foot and lower leg from medical images. We measure each person’s running style in our gait laboratory and then calculate how much stress the bone experiences during each step. From this we can understand if running in different conditions, such as different footwear, changes the amount of stress acting on the bone.

Related publications:

• Estimating tibial stress throughout the duration of a treadmill run. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise
• UK Association for Computational Mechanics conference paper