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Updated: Jun 2, 2026
Clinical-oriented Three-dimensional Gait Analysis Method for Evaluating Gait Disorder
Published on: March 4, 2018
The gait of children with and without cerebral palsy: work, energy, and angular momentum
Shawn Russell1, Bradford Bennett, Pradip Sheth
1Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA.
Insights
This study analyzed gait in children with cerebral palsy (CP) and typically developing children using work, energy, and angular momentum. Findings show increased internal work in CP gait, linked to angular momentum, offering insights for locomotion interventions.
Area of Science:
- Biomechanics
- Human Movement Science
- Pediatric Gait Analysis
Background:
- Cerebral palsy (CP) significantly impacts motor function, including gait.
- Characterizing gait pathologies requires detailed kinetic and kinematic analysis.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop a method for characterizing gait pathologies, specifically cerebral palsy, using biomechanical parameters.
- To investigate the relationship between internal work, external work, and angular momentum in children's gait.
Main Methods:
- Collected kinematic data from 24 children (16 with spastic diplegic CP, 8 typically developed) at self-selected walking speeds.
- Calculated work (internal, external, whole body), energy (rotational, linear), and angular momentum from kinematic data.
Main Results:
- Internal work constituted 53% of whole-body work in typically developing children and 40% in children with CP.
- Increased angular momentum correlated with increased internal work in gait.
- Angular momentum can help determine gait kinetics and kinematics contributing to internal work.
Conclusions:
- Internal work is a key differentiator in gait between typically developing children and those with CP.
- Angular momentum analysis provides insights into the biomechanics of inefficient gait.
- Findings can inform interventions to improve bipedal locomotion efficiency by reducing non-contributory internal work.
Abstract:
This paper describes a method to characterize gait pathologies like cerebral palsy using work, energy, and angular momentum. For a group of 24 children, 16 with spastic diplegic cerebral palsy and 8 typically developed, kinematic data were collected at the subjects self selected comfortable walking speed. From the kinematics, the work-internal, external, and whole body; energy-rotational and relative linear; and the angular momentum were calculated. Our findings suggest that internal work represents 53% and 40% respectively of the whole body work in gait for typically developed children and children with cerebral palsy. Analysis of the angular momentum of the whole body, and other subgroupings of body segments, revealed a relationship between increased angular momentum and increased internal work. This relationship allows one to use angular momentum to assist in determining the kinetics and kinematics of gait which contribute to increased internal work. Thus offering insight to interventions which can be applied to increase the efficiency of bipedal locomotion, by reducing internal work which has no direct contribution to center of mass motion, in both normal and pathologic populations.
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