Abstract
Laboratory-based nonwearable motion analysis systems have significantly advanced with robust objective measurement of the limb motion, resulting in quantified, standardized, and reliable outcome measures compared with traditional, semisubjective, observational gait analysis. However, the requirement for large laboratory space and operational expertise makes these systems impractical for gait analysis at local clinics and homes. In this paper, we focus on autonomous gait event detection with our bespoke, relatively inexpensive, and portable, single-camera gait kinematics analysis system. Our proposed system includes video acquisition with camera calibration, Kalman filter + Structural-Similarity-based marker tracking, autonomous knee angle calculation, video-frame-identification-based autonomous gait event detection, and result visualization. The only operational effort required is the marker-template selection for tracking initialization, aided by an easy-to-use graphic user interface. The knee angle validation on 10 stroke patients and 5 healthy volunteers against a gold standard optical motion analysis system indicates very good agreement. The autonomous gait event detection shows high detection rates for all gait events. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed system can automatically measure the knee angle and detect gait events with good accuracy and thus offer an alternative, cost-effective, and convenient solution for clinical gait kinematics analysis.
Highlights
Techniques which allow for objective clinical gait analysis while being minimally intrusive to the stroke patients have dramatically advanced recently [1], resulting in quantified, standardized, and more reliable measurement of the joint kinematics [2] essential for gait analysis [3] compared with traditional, semisubjective [1], observational gait analysis [4, 5]
All stroke patients were recruited between June 2011 and July 2012 from 4 UK hospitals, and all healthy volunteers were recruited from the University of Strathclyde staff during May 2014
Emerging 2D single-camera gait analysis systems have the advantage of low cost and high portability compared to laboratory-based motion analysis systems
Summary
Techniques which allow for objective clinical gait analysis while being minimally intrusive to the stroke patients have dramatically advanced recently [1], resulting in quantified, standardized, and more reliable measurement of the joint kinematics [2] essential for gait analysis [3] compared with traditional, semisubjective [1], observational gait analysis [4, 5]. The expensive system modules and the requirement of significant operational expertise make these systems inconvenient to patients and health services. In this respect, further research on the development of cost-effective and portable systems has emerged. Further research on the development of cost-effective and portable systems has emerged The portability of these systems would enable conducting gait analysis with adequate fidelity outside a gait laboratory, for example, at local clinics and homes. The stroke patient would send the analyzed gait parameters to physiatrists for near-real-time clinical consultation, which has the potential to facilitate the development of increasingly
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