Evidence Hub

Indentation for the Mechanical Characterization of Soft Tissues in Contact With a Knee Orthosis: Towards Simulation of the Leg-Orthosis Interface

ClinicalTrials.gov · COMPLETED, 2026

20 participants

Abstract

Knee osteoarthritis is a common cause of disability, affecting more than 650 million people aged 40 and over worldwide in 2020. To relieve pain and improve mobility, some patients use knee orthoses . However, the effectiveness of these devices is not universally agreed upon, and users report widely varying levels of satisfaction.

This study aims to understand how the body responds to these orthoses from a biomechanical perspective, and in particular to quantify the interactions with soft tissues (skin, adipose tissue and muscles). To better understand this interaction, the authors propose to characterize soft tissue behavior on an individual basis using an indentation technique. In practice, this involves pressing on the soft tissues with an ultrasound probe to measure their stiffness at the interface between the leg and the orthosis.

Conditions: Soft Tissue Characterization of the Knee Region.

Primary outcome: force-displacement curves.

Enrollment: 20 participants.

How strong is the evidence?

Evidence Hub reads this as a clinical trial, done in people. Its evidence level is 3 of 5 (Moderate · trial / cohort / secondary analysis). Trials without a large randomized design, cohorts and secondary analyses give moderate evidence. Reported size: 20 participants or records.

How the five levels of evidence work. The level is assigned automatically from the abstract and can be wrong, so check the paper.

Read the paper

Related studies

Go deeper in Evidence Hub

Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.

Open this study Sign up free