BACKGROUND In addition to cognitive deficits, people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) can experience motor dysfunction, including deficits in gait and balance. Objective, instrumented motor performance assessment may allow the detection of subtle MCI-related motor deficits, allowing early diagnosis and intervention. Motor assessment under dual-task conditions may increase diagnostic accurac...

© 2011 Jang-Hee Yoo and Mark S. Nixon 259 We present a new method for an automated markerless system to describe, analyze, and classify human gait motion. The automated system consists of three stages: i) detection and extraction of the moving human body and its contour from image sequences, ii) extraction of gait figures by the joint angles and body points, and iii) analysis of motion paramete...

BACKGROUND New technologies for gait assessment are emerging and have provided new avenues for accurately measuring gait characteristics in home and clinic. However, potential meaningful clinical gait parameters beyond speed have received little attention in frailty research. OBJECTIVE To study gait characteristics in different frailty status groups for identifying the most useful parameters ...

BACKGROUND The 10-Meter Walk Tests (10MWT) and the 6-Minute Walk Test (6MinWT) are applied to assess gait capacity in paediatric patients. To better objectify changes in qualitative aspects of gait, temporo-spatial parameters like stride length or step symmetry could be simultaneously assessed with a GAITRite system. Reliability has not yet been evaluated in a heterogeneous sample of children w...

Previous research suggests that older adults may have difficulty attending to simultaneous tasks. This study was conducted to determine how concurrent performance of a secondary cognitive task influences walking and stepping over an obstacle in community dwelling older adults. Twenty-one men and women with a mean age of 73.4 years (S.D.=5.3) participated in the study. Subjects performed a gait ...

The aim of this study was to determine the test-retest reliability of an automated infrared-assisted, trunk accelerometer-based gait analysis system for measuring gait parameters of healthy subjects in a hospital. Thirty-five participants (28 of them females; age range, 23-79 years) performed a 5-m walk twice using an accelerometer-based gait analysis system with infrared assist. Measurements o...

Background and Hypothesis: Freezing of gait (FoG), the failure to initiate or maintain locomotion, is a common symptom in Parkinsonism that severely impacts patients’ quality life. Wearable technology such as inertial measurement units (IMU) are being widely investigated method detecting these episodes with increasing sensitivity specificity. The aim this initial study collect objective data us...

Gait analysis may enhance clinical practice. However, its use is limited due to the need for expensive equipment which is not always available in clinical settings. Recent evidence suggests that Microsoft Kinect may provide a low cost gait analysis method. The purpose of this report is to critically evaluate the literature describing the concurrent validity of using the Kinect as a gait analysi...

BACKGROUND Arthrodesis is an effective and reliable treatment for end-stage ankle arthritis; however, many patients develop ipsilateral adjacent joint arthritis following surgery. The mechanism that drives adjacent joint arthritis remains uncertain. Cadaveric simulation permits direct investigation of the effects of both arthrodesis and movement strategy on adjacent joints during simulated walk...

In existing advanced A/K prostheses the sti ness and damping at the prosthetic knee joint are applied by hydraulic or pneumatic cylinders. The pre-set parameters being constant, are not optimal during the whole gait cycle, for di erent walking speeds, and sudden posture irregularities. The complexity of normal and prosthetic gait leads to the development of 'soft' control (non-analytic) governe...