The one-week and three-month reliability of acceleration outcomes from an insole-embedded inertial measurement unit during treadmill running

ABSTRACT

Inertial measurement units (IMUs) represent an exciting opportunity for researchers to broaden our understanding of running-related injuries, and for clinicians to expand their application of running gait analysis. The primary aim of our study was to investigate the 1-week (short-term) and 3-month (long-term) reliability of peak resultant, vertical, and anteroposterior accelerations derived from insole-embedded IMUs. The secondary aim was to assess the reliability of peak acceleration variability and left–right limb symmetry in all directions over the short and long term. A sample of healthy adult rearfoot runners (n = 23; age 41.7 ± 11.2 years) ran at a variety of speeds (2.5 m/s, 3.0 m/s, and 3.5 m/s) on a treadmill in standardised footwear with insole-embedded IMUs in each shoe. Peak accelerations exhibited good to excellent short-term reliability and moderate to excellent long-term reliability in all directions. Peak acceleration variability showed poor to good short- and long-term reliability, whereas the symmetry of peak accelerations demonstrated moderate to excellent and moderate to good short- and long-term reliability, respectively. Our results demonstrate how insole-embedded IMUs represent a viable option for clinicians to measure peak accelerations within the clinic.

KEYWORDS:

• Variability
• accelerometer
• biomechanics
• symmetry

Disclosure statement

LF and NT are employees of Plantiga Technologies, Inc. No other conflicts exist among the authors.

Supplementary data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/14763141.2023.2275258.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by Michael Smith Health Research BC [HPI-2020-0719]; Mitacs [IT24201].