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, HNS '88, '93M, biomechanist and manager of the lab, said he was concerned that the large stark laboratory--located in the hospital basement--didn't have a friendly and welcoming atmosphere and many of the young patients became apprehensive or changed the way they walked when they noticed the sensor mats.

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 says. "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 therapist Nancy Lennon, AS '88, and biomechanist Jill Schuyler, HNS '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 two-foot-square pressure mat on the floor was very visible to a child. In fact, children would try to step over it or change the way they walk. In order to capture accurate pressure information, we had to make it so that the child would not notice the mat on the floor," he says.

Continuing the road into a mural at the end of the room seemed like a natural idea.

Castagno, who also teaches a biomechanics course on campus for the College of Health and Nursing Sciences, contacted Martha Carothers, chairperson 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 this group, he chose Brian Meulener, a senior illustration major from Little Silver, N.J., and Mark O'Dell, a junior visual communications major from Baltimore. The pair ended up working for more than 100 hours on the project during UD's Winter Session in January.

Castagno chose his own favorite scene from the classic Judy Garland movie in which the apple trees outside the witch's cottage 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, who worked steadily from 1-5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, says 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 notes.

O'Dell, who hopes to own his own graphic design business some day, says 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, says the project was a good way to do something useful.

Both are 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 like a cartoon.

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, HNS '97, 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 says. "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."