Evaluating perceptual maps of asymmetries for gait symmetry quantification and pathology detection

Abstract

The gait movement is a complex and essential process of the human activity. Yet, many types of diseases (neurological, muscular, orthopedic, etc.) can be diagnosed from the gait analysis. This paper introduces a novel method to quickly visualize the different body parts related to an (temporally shift-invariant) asymmetric movement in the human gait of a patient for daily clinical usage. The goal is to provide a cheap and easy-to-use method that measures the gait asymmetry and display results in a perceptual and intuitive way. This method relies on an affordable consumer depth sensor, the Kinect, which is very suitable for small room and fast diagnostic, since it is easy to setup and marker-less.