[Integrated gait analysis: a complex expert system approach to detailed data evaluation]

Integrated Gait Analysis is still not accepted as an important tool in a routine clinical environment because of its lack of assessment procedures closely based on the raw data measurements. Furthermore, an adequate treatment of the complex process of human movement is missing. This contribution is intended to successively describe the scheme of a dedicated approach for gait analysis data assessment. Therein, different technologies already discussed in the literature have been used. Some examples are given for the purpose of illustration. To provide in advance sufficiently different and well-known measurement conditions, extreme manipulations in the alignment of below-knee prostheses have been carried out. It is shown that some specific data formats consisting of subgroups of gait patterns have turned out to be important for further partial processing and for interfacing the different subsystems. However, due to data characteristics of the raw data and the lack of a well-founded a priori knowledge, some principal questions have to be left open. Therefore, on the basis of the different results presented below and their discussion, a more detailed model of the process is proposed for further research following this concept.