ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sports Act. Living
Sec. Exercise Physiology
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fspor.2025.1688891
This article is part of the Research TopicAssessment and Monitoring of Human Movement Volume IIView all 8 articles
Assessing Balance via Cross-Line Laser in Individuals with Chronic Ankle Instability
Provisionally accepted
- 1UNC Charlotte, Charlotte, United States
- 2laboratoire UR 4660-C3S Culture, Sport, Sante, Societe, Besancon, France
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Abstract (264 words) Introduction: Chronic ankle instability (CAI) is a condition characterized by recurring lateral ankle sprains and bouts of instability. Individuals with CAI have poor balance, a factor in the development, progression and recovery of the condition. Individuals with improved balance report fewer CAI-related symptoms. Thus, accurate balance assessment is crucial to recovery from CAI. The gold-standard for measuring balance is using force plates. Although sensitive to subtle changes in balance, the force plate's clinical utility is diminished due to high associated costs. Alternatively, a low-cost cross-line laser may serve as a surrogate to the gold-standard within a clinical setting. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to validate the cross-line laser as a tool for balance assessment in comparison to the gold-standard force plate. Methods: Twenty-four individuals with CAI in a single-limb stance balanced on a force plate for three 10-second trials in eyes-open and eyes-closed conditions with a cross-line laser strapped to the top of their foot. A camera in front of the force plate captured movement of the cross-line laser. Utilizing a tracking software, a virtual marker was placed on the cross-line laser that quantified movement of the cross-line laser. Results: Results of this study found that cross-line laser outcomes speed, horizontal-velocity, total distance, and resultant-velocity measures had moderate-to-strong relationships to force plate outcomes Center of Pressure (CoP) average velocity and CoP 95% area (r: 0.46 – 0.87) and CAI patient-reported symptoms (r: 0.44 – 0.52) indicating that these measures could be used two-fold. Conclusion: This study validates the cross-line laser as balance assessment tool that may serve as a low-cost instrument to quantify balance.
Keywords: balance, Chronic ankle instability, Force plate, Postural control, External feedback
Received: 19 Aug 2025; Accepted: 23 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Swails, Hardy, Dury, Thomas, Linens and Donovan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Madison Swails, mosbourn@charlotte.edu
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