Human Gait Analysis Metric for Gait Retraining

Area of Science:

• Biomechanics
• Rehabilitation Engineering
• Clinical Assessment

Background:

• Human gait analysis involves complex spatial, temporal, kinematic, and kinetic parameters.
• Synthesizing these diverse parameters into a single, quantifiable metric is challenging.
• Existing clinical measures provide valuable but often separate insights into gait function.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce and validate the Combined Gait Asymmetry Metric (CGAM) for synthesizing human gait motion.
• To assess the correlation between CGAM and established clinical gait assessments.
• To evaluate CGAM's utility in quantifying gait changes post-rehabilitation in stroke survivors.

Main Methods:

• Developed CGAM by normalizing and weighting various gait parameters (spatial, temporal, kinematic, kinetic).
• Collected gait data from individuals with stroke before and after 12 rehabilitation sessions.
• Compared CGAM scores with clinical measures: Timed Up and Go (TUG), Six-Minute Walk Test (6MWT), and gait velocity.

Main Results:

• Step length, step time, and swing time asymmetries strongly correlated with CGAM.
• Double limb support asymmetry showed minimal correlation; ground reaction force asymmetry showed weak correlation.
• CGAM scores moderately correlated with TUG and strongly correlated with 6MWT and gait velocity post-rehabilitation.

Conclusions:

• CGAM effectively synthesizes multiple gait parameters into a single, meaningful score.
• CGAM demonstrates strong correlations with key clinical outcomes, indicating its potential as a comprehensive gait assessment tool.
• The metric shows promise for optimizing robotic rehabilitation and defining quantitative thresholds for balanced gait asymmetry.