Gait Analysis
Ghazaleh Soleimani; Mehran Emadi Andani; Hamid Reza Marateb; Fariba Bahrami
Volume 9, Issue 4 , February 2015, , Pages 361-374
Abstract
Walking is one of the most widely used movements affecting life quality. Therefore, the study of factors affecting human gait has always been an important issue. Walking speed, as a physical perturbation, affects the quality of human walking. The purpose of this study is to estimate the effects of walking ...
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Walking is one of the most widely used movements affecting life quality. Therefore, the study of factors affecting human gait has always been an important issue. Walking speed, as a physical perturbation, affects the quality of human walking. The purpose of this study is to estimate the effects of walking speed on the short-time gait parameters. Thirty-two healthy subjects(mean SD, age: 27.56 ± 20.4 years; body height: 158.19 ± 20.83 cm; body weight: 54.89 ± 20.59 kg;gender: 59% female)participated in this study.Kinetic, kinematic and electromyographic data were recorded at the following five walking speed categories: very slow, slow, medium, fast and very fast. The effect of speed on spatio-temporal parameters, muscle synergy space, walking smoothness, representation of joints displacement and the correlation between lower limb displacement and also correlation between muscles activation patterns were studied. Having being used physical perturbation, 46 predictors were extracted from one gait cycle information, some of which were proposed for the first time inthe literature for example size of muscle synergy, minimum angular jerk, lower limb contributions and skewness, kurtosis and curvature of joints movements . Using muscle synergies showed that increasing walking speed leads to increase the size of synergy space. It could be concluded that central nervous system tries to adopt more organaized strategy for recruiting muscles and remaining stable at fast speeds. Our results showed that, speed plays a crucial role in human gait characteristic. We can investigate our methods among more subjects and also patients with gait disorders. We can evaluate other indices like gait stability based on short-term data recording.
Rehabilitation Engineering
Nima Jamshidi; Mostafa Rostami; Siamak Najarian; Mohammad Bagher Menhaj; Mohammad Saadatnia; Firouz Salami
Volume 2, Issue 1 , June 2008, , Pages 57-64
Abstract
In this research the kinematics parameters derived from ground reaction forces were evaluated to limit the differential diagnoses and measure the degree of disabilities during the walking among neuropathic subjects. 25 neuropathic subjects affected by drop foot and 20 normal subjects were enrolled in ...
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In this research the kinematics parameters derived from ground reaction forces were evaluated to limit the differential diagnoses and measure the degree of disabilities during the walking among neuropathic subjects. 25 neuropathic subjects affected by drop foot and 20 normal subjects were enrolled in the study. There were no differences in the age, weight and height between the patients and normal subjects (p > 0.05). Each subject was tested in average 10±2 times for calculating the kinetic parameters derived from ground reaction forces. Then time parameters and vertical components of force including three extremums of vertical forces, which state various phases in gait, anterior-posterior component of ground reaction force, maximum propulsion force, maximum breaking force during loading stage, maximum propulsion force in the end phase of terminal stance, impact derived from the contact of the patient' foot with floor, loading rate and unloading of vertical forces during the contact' phase of the patient's foot with floor and center of pressure displacement in sole of foot and friction' coefficient between foot and floor were calculated. The results revealed that correlation between the first and second peaks of the anterior-posterior component of ground reaction forces, center of pressure displacement pattern in the sole of foot and time parameters of the vertical forces can be good indexes for differential diagnoses and measuring the degree of disabilities. This research can extend the clinical applications of ground reaction force plate, introduce suitable criteria to limit differential diagnoses and measure the degree of disabilities among the neuropathies. There is a need to replicate this research with more patients and normal subjects to confirm our findings.
