Abstract
In gait analysis, the accuracy of knee joint angles and moments is critical for clinical decision-making. The purpose of this study was to determine the efficacy of two existing algorithms for knee joint axis correction under pathological conditions. Gait data from 20 healthy participants and 20 patients with knee osteoarthritis (OA) were collected using a motion capture system. An algorithm based on Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and a functional joint-based algorithm (FJA) were used to define the knee joint flexion axis. The results show that PCA decreased crosstalk for both groups, and FJA reduced crosstalk in patients with knee OA only. PCA decreased the range of motions of patients with knee OA in the direction of abduction/adduction significantly. There was a significant increase in the maximum knee flexion moment of patients with knee OA by FJA. The results indicate that both algorithms can efficiently reduce crosstalk for gait from patients with knee OA, which can further influence the results of knee joint angles and moments. We recommend that the correction algorithms be applied in clinical gait analysis with patients with knee OA.
Highlights
In the past few decades, clinical gait analysis has been widely used to assess movement quality and the effect of therapeutic interventions for patients with knee osteoarthritis (OA)
An algorithm based on Principal Component Analysis (PCA) [9] and a functional joint-based algorithm (FJA) [18] were used to define the knee joint flexion axis
We hypothesized that the correction algorithms could significantly increase peak knee flexion moment (KFM) and reduce peak knee adduction moment (KAM)
Summary
In the past few decades, clinical gait analysis has been widely used to assess movement quality and the effect of therapeutic interventions for patients with knee osteoarthritis (OA). The positions of anatomical landmarks are usually determined by markers placed on the skin For this group, common symptoms like the joint space narrowing and bone spurs can affect the morphology of the knee, which makes it more challenging to determine the bony marker positions. If the knee joint flexion axis, normally determined by the medial and lateral epicondyle markers, is misaligned, this will make the joint coordinate system not aligned with axes about which rotations are assumed to occur [2]. This misalignment of the knee joint coordinate system will subsequently cause changes of the knee varus-valgus and axial rotation angles. This phenomenon is called crosstalk [3]
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