Abstract
A recently designed gait phase detection (GPD) system, with the ability to detect all seven phases of gait in healthy adults, was modified for GPD in children with cerebral palsy (CP). A shank-attached gyroscope sent angular velocity to a rule-based algorithm in LabVIEW to identify the distinct characteristics of the signal. Seven typically developing children (TD) and five children with CP were asked to walk on treadmill at their self-selected speed while using this system. Using only shank angular velocity, all seven phases of gait (Loading Response, Mid-Stance, Terminal Stance, Pre-Swing, Initial Swing, Mid-Swing and Terminal Swing) were reliably detected in real time. System performance was validated against two established GPD methods: (1) force-sensing resistors (GPD-FSR) (for typically developing children) and (2) motion capture (GPD-MoCap) (for both typically developing children and children with CP). The system detected over 99% of the phases identified by GPD-FSR and GPD-MoCap. Absolute values of average gait phase onset detection deviations relative to GPD-MoCap were less than 100 ms for both TD children and children with CP. The newly designed system, with minimized sensor setup and low processing burden, is cosmetic and economical, making it a viable solution for real-time stand-alone and portable applications such as triggering functional electrical stimulation (FES) in rehabilitation systems. This paper verifies the applicability of the GPD system to identify specific gait events for triggering FES to enhance gait in children with CP.
Highlights
Motion capture (MoCap) is useful to objectively quantify human movement [1] and is often used clinically to analyze walking gait in individuals with cerebral palsy (CP) [2,3,4,5]
Typical gait has been described as a series of seven contiguous phases: Loading Response (LR), Mid-Stance (MSt), Terminal Stance (TSt), Pre-Swing (PSw), Initial
Participants walked on an instrumented treadmill (Bertec, Columbus, OH, USA) at their selfhandrails that were attached to the treadmill
Summary
Motion capture (MoCap) is useful to objectively quantify human movement [1] and is often used clinically to analyze walking gait in individuals with cerebral palsy (CP) [2,3,4,5]. Complete gait analysis systems typically combine optical MoCap with force-sensing platforms (aka force plates) to collect kinematic and kinetic data, respectively. Typical gait has been described as a series of seven contiguous phases: Loading Response (LR), Mid-Stance (MSt), Terminal Stance (TSt), Pre-Swing (PSw), Initial. Swing (ISw), Mid-Swing (MSw), and Terminal Swing (TSw) [2,3,6]. Detecting these phases during walking, known as gait phase detection (GPD), is a critical component of gait analysis. While MoCap-based GPD (GPD-MoCap) is considered the gold standard [1,7,8,9,10,11], Sensors 2019, 19, 2517; doi:10.3390/s19112517 www.mdpi.com/journal/sensors
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