Electromyography as an Important Parameter for a Proper Assessment of Dynamic Muscles Strength in Gait Analysis

Abstract

Normal gait is a functional movement involving the most efficient energy transfer. Cerebral Palsy describes a group of developmental d isorders of movement and posture causing activity restriction or d isability. It represents one of the most common cause of physical disability in ch ildren. Gait analysis provides great contributions to the understanding of gait disorders originating fro m musculoskeletal abnormalit ies. In these patients provides a mean for a mo re co mprehensive treatment plan. At this point, the potential and necessity of using correct biomechanical models that consistently study the abnormalities beco me clear. Reinforcing and correcting a simp le gait analysis and eliminating the unknowns when selecting the appropriate treatment are crucial in clin ical settings. In this paper a musculoskeletal th igh model with a simple rescaling method using subject-specific anthropometric data is presented. The thigh model estimates muscle forces of the six muscles through the walking based in static optimization without including electromyography data as input. We used the model proposed for identify the muscles strength involved in normal and pathological gait. The forces obtaining for normal subjects achieved high concordance with their electro myography data and outcomes to other musculoskeletal model recently presented. In other hand, in patients with cerebral palsy with crouch gait the outcomes of our musculoskeletal model don't show a correct concordance with their electro myography data. For this reason we get on the conclusion that take electro myography data became important in modeling a pathological gait as crouch gait.