Kinematic evaluation of abnormal gait due to spastic paralysis

Abstract

Abnormal gait patterns in young children with cerebral palsy are not easy to distinguish from gait abnormalities caused by orthopedic diseases and distinctive gait patterns due to individual habits. As a first step to enable early screening of central nervous system diseases only by simple motion measurement, the gait characteristics are evaluated by using the coordination between lower limb joints during walking in this study. A 4-year-old girl who had severe gait disturbance due to hereditary spastic paraplegia, a healthy 2-year-old boy, and five healthy adult male participate in the experiment. During the experiment, kinematic data are collected using an optical motion capture system. The coordination between lower limb joints during one gait cycle is obtained by a singular value decomposition of left and right joint angles, including hip flexion, hip adduction, hip internal rotation, knee flexion, ankle dorsiflexion, ankle inversion, and ankle adduction. By comparing the results of the singular value decomposition, the kinematic characteristics of gait disturbance due to hereditary spastic paraplegia are described.