Comparative assessment of heel rise detection for consistent gait phase separation

Area of Science:

• Biomechanics
• Human Movement Analysis
• Gait Science

Background:

• Precise identification of gait events, such as heel rise (HR), is essential for reliable gait analysis.
• The gradual nature of heel rise presents challenges in accurate detection, leading to variability across studies and measurement techniques.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare different heel rise detection methods against underlying heel motion and visual detection across varying speeds, footwear, and individuals.
• To evaluate the precision, consistency, and agreement of optical motion capture (OMC), force plate, and inertial measurement unit (IMU) based methods.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of over 10,000 strides from 15 healthy subjects under diverse conditions.
• Evaluation of OMC (vertical acceleration, jerk, position, velocity), force plate, and IMU-based methods.
• Comparison against the heel marker's motion pattern and visually detected heel rise.

Main Results:

• OMC methods using heel marker vertical acceleration and jerk demonstrated consistent heel rise event identification, outperforming velocity and position-based methods.
• Velocity and position-based methods showed variability due to subtle individual differences in heel rise post-mid-stance.
• Proposed IMU-based methods closely matched the accuracy of OMC-based approaches.

Conclusions:

• Accurate heel rise identification enhances gait phase separation and improves precision and consistency in gait analysis.
• The heel marker's jerk-based method provides robust and reliable heel rise detection.
• Validated IMU-based algorithms offer a cost-effective, mobile alternative for gait analysis.