Automatic Classification of Barefoot and Shod Populations Based on the Foot Metrics and Plantar Pressure Patterns

The human being’s locomotion under the barefoot condition enables normal foot function and lower limb biomechanical performance from a biological evolution perspective. No study has demonstrated the specific differences between habitually barefoot and shod cohorts based on foot morphology and dynamic plantar pressure during walking and running. The present study aimed to assess and classify foot metrics and dynamic plantar pressure patterns of barefoot and shod people via machine learning algorithms. One hundred and forty-six age-matched barefoot (n = 78) and shod (n = 68) participants were recruited for this study. Gaussian Naïve Bayes were selected to identify foot morphology differences between unshod and shod cohorts. The support vector machine (SVM) classifiers based on the principal component analysis (PCA) feature extraction and recursive feature elimination (RFE) feature selection methods were utilized to separate and classify the barefoot and shod populations via walking and running plantar pressure parameters. Peak pressure in the M1-M5 regions during running was significantly higher for the shod participants, increasing 34.8, 37.3, 29.2, 31.7, and 40.1%, respectively. The test accuracy of the Gaussian Naïve Bayes model achieved an accuracy of 93%. The mean 10-fold cross-validation scores were 0.98 and 0.96 for the RFE- and PCA-based SVM models, and both feature extract-based and feature select-based SVM models achieved an accuracy of 95%. The foot shape, especially the forefoot region, was shown to be a valuable classifier of shod and unshod groups. Dynamic pressure patterns during running contribute most to the identification of the two cohorts, especially the forefoot region.