Vol. 19, No. 26

April 6, 2000

Volunteers install ‘yellow brick road’ in hospital lab

Children at the Gait Lab at Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children can literally follow the yellow brick road to better health thanks to some University of Delaware students and alumni. They have painted a brilliant mural of a scene from The Wizard of Oz on a once blank wall in the lab and painted bricks on a winding path of yellow linoleum to disguise floor sensors that children must walk over to have their gait patterns measured. Patrick Castagno, biomechanist and manager of the lab, said he was concerned that the large stark lab–located in the hospital basement–didn’t have the friendly and welcoming atmosphere for which the rest of the facility is famous. He also was concerned when many of the young patients brought in to have their gait analyzed were asked to walk across a floor mat and would be apprehensive or change the way they walked when they noticed the sensor. Pondering how to disguise the sensors and brighten up the room at the same time, he hit upon the idea of the yellow brick road. “We work with children who have difficulty walking for one reason or another,” Castagno said. “We’re a diagnostic laboratory with computerized instrumentation that enables us to very precisely analyze a child’s gait pattern. We supply this information to our orthopedic surgeons, physical therapists (Nancy Lennon, PT ’88) and biomechanist (Jill Schuyler, MS ’97) who determine corrective action for these walking problems.” During walking, the floor sensors in the yellow brick road measure the pressure dynamically distributed under the patient’s feet. In addition, six high-speed video cameras mounted on the walls are measuring the motion of the joints, and radio-transmitted electromyographic equipment is used to measure the electrical activity of the child’s leg muscles. “Before we constructed the yellow brick road, the 2 foot square pressure mat on the floor was very visible to a child. In fact, children would notice the mat and try to step over it or change the way they walk. In order the capture accurate pressure information, we had to make it so that the child would not notice the mat on the floor,” he said. “I’ve always loved the movie The Wizard of Oz, and I started thinking that we could have a yellow brick road for the kids to walk on and disguise the sensors in the road,” he said. Continuing the road into a mural at the end of the room seemed like a natural idea. Castagno, who earned his bachelor’s degree in physical education in 1988 and his master’s degree in biomechanics in 1993, both at UD, maintains strong ties to his alma mater, and even teaches a biomechanics course on campus for the College of Health and Nursing Sciences. It seemed only natural that he would contact Martha Carothers, chair of UD’s Department of Art, who put out a call for students interested in painting a mural. Nine students submitted portfolios for Castagno to review, and from them he chose two students to do the work. Brian Meulener, a senior illustration major from Little Silver, N.J., and Mark O’Dell, a junior visual communications major from Baltimore, had never met before they began the project and ended up working for more than 100 hours during the University’s Winter Session in January. Castagno chose his own favorite scene from the classic Judy Garland movie and had Meulener and O’Dell sketch out their ideas for the scene outside the witch’s cottage where the apple trees start to talk and throw their fruit at Dorothy and her traveling companions. He rented the movie and froze that particular spot for Meulener and O’Dell to study. Each completed a couple of sketches and when all three agreed upon the setting, the two artists went to work. Their final sketch was projected on the wall and each painted in a portion of the scene. Each started painting from opposite ends of the wall, although their schedules rarely allowed them to work together. O’Dell worked steadily from 1-5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, and said he enjoyed eating dinner at the hospital. Meulener worked late at night, sometimes into the wee hours of the morning and on weekends. They communicated by leaving each other notes. O’Dell, who hopes to own his own graphic design business some day, said he enjoyed the mix of children he encountered during his afternoon painting and the questions they asked. Meulener, who has an internship at an advertising firm in New York lined up after graduation, said the project was a good way to do something useful. Both were experienced muralists. Meulener had previously painted Winnie the Pooh scenes in a friend’s nursery, and O’Dell had painted murals at his high school. Both were concerned that the scene look professional and decided not to focus on characters to keep it from looking cartoonish. As the yellow brick road winds through the trees in the mural, it also projects out onto the floor of the lab where UD graduate student Scott Coleman of West Point, N.Y., a biomechanics major who completed an internship at the Gait Lab and is now doing research into developing a new type of ice skate at UD, helped Castagno design and paint bricks on the linoleum road. “Before, this was pretty much an empty room with big stuffed animals,” Castagno said. “These guys have worked incredibly hard and really brought this lab to life. Children will enjoy coming to the Gait Lab for many years to come.” –Beth Thomas