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Determinants of gait stability while walking on a treadmill: A machine learning approach
Fabienne Reynard1, Philippe Terrier2
1Clinique romande de réadaptation SUVACare, Sion, Switzerland.
Journal of Biomechanics
|November 5, 2017
Summary
Gait local dynamic stability (LDS) is influenced by preferred walking speed (PWS) and age in healthy adults. Instability increases with age at low PWS, highlighting the need to consider these factors in balance assessments.
Area of Science:
- Biomechanics
- Human Locomotion
- Gait Analysis
Background:
- Local dynamic stability (LDS) assesses human locomotion balance.
- Limited understanding exists regarding LDS sensitivity to individual characteristics in healthy adults.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the influence of age, sex, body mass, height, and preferred walking speed (PWS) on gait LDS.
- To identify interactions between individual characteristics affecting gait stability.
Main Methods:
- Reanalysis of accelerometric data from 100 healthy adults (20-70 years).
- Utilized Random Forest (RF) for variable importance and Multiple Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS) for interaction detection.
- Assessed gait LDS during 10-minute treadmill walking.
Main Results:
- Preferred walking speed (PWS) and age were significant correlates of gait LDS.
- No association found between gait LDS and sex, body height, or body mass.
- An age by PWS interaction was identified: gait stability remained constant across ages at high PWS but decreased with age at low PWS.
Conclusions:
- Age and PWS are crucial factors to consider when evaluating dynamic balance using LDS.
- Ignoring these variables may introduce bias in balance assessment studies.
- Future research should account for individual PWS and age in gait stability analyses.
