This thesis first explored the effects of concurrent spatial attention and working memory task performance on over-ground gait in healthy young and older adults. It then compared over-ground gait parameters and working memory performance in mild Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and normal controls (NC) and investigated costs of dual-tasking on working memory performance and cadence during treadmill wal...

Background: Gait disturbance is major disturbance of Parkinson’s disease (PD). Although continuous physical therapy (PT) has been demonstrated to improve gait disturbance and prevent falls among PD patients, few studies have reported on the immediate effect of PT. The aim of this study is to investigate the immediate effects of PT on gait parameters and joint kinematics in patients with PD. Met...

Stroke is a major cause of disability in the US, leaving most survivors with abnormal motor function, often resulting in hemiparetic gait. Quality of gait in this population has been well characterized by measures of velocity, though velocity alone provides only a general index of functional mobility. Researchers and clinicians should continue to develop a complete characterization of behaviora...

This study is a single blind randomized controlled trial to determine the effect of virtual reality-based postural control training on the gait ability in patients with chronic stroke. Sixteen subjects were randomly assigned to either experimental group (VR, n= 8) or control group (CPT, n= 8). Subjects in both groups received conventional physical therapy for 60 min per day, five days per week ...

The purpose of the present study was to examine whether serum vitamin D status is associated with a change in gait speed in young adults. In this cross-sectional study, 60 young adults aged ≥ 19 years (36 female and 24 male participants) were recruited from the general population. Spatiotemporal parameters of gait were assessed by using a validated wireless inertial sensing device. The blood vi...

This paper describes a measurement system designed to register the displacement of the legs using a two-dimensional laser range sensor with a scanning plane parallel to the ground and extract gait parameters. In the proposed methodology, the position of the legs is estimated by fitting two circles with the laser points that define their contour and the gait parameters are extracted applying a s...

This paper presents a real-time and on-chip gait measurement algorithm used in our Gait Measurement System (GMS). Our GMS is a small foot-mounted device based on an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), which contains an accelerometer and a gyroscope. The GMS can compute spatio-temporal gait parameters in real-time and transmit them to a remote receiver. Measured gait parameters include cadence, vel...

BACKGROUND Mobility impairment is common in people with multiple sclerosis (PwMS) and there is a need to assess mobility in remote settings. Here, we apply a novel wireless, skin-mounted, and conformal inertial sensor (BioStampRC, MC10 Inc.) to examine gait characteristics of PwMS under controlled conditions. We determine the accuracy and precision of BioStampRC in measuring gait kinematics by ...

BACKGROUND Gait analyses are an important tool to diagnose diseases or to measure the rehabilitation process of patients. In this context, sensor-based systems, and especially accelerometers, gain in importance. They are able to improve objectiveness of gait analyses. In clinical settings, there is usually a supervisor who gives instructions to the patients, but this can have an influence on pa...

INTRODUCTION Variability in task output is a ubiquitous characteristic that results from non-continuous motor neuron firing during muscular force generation. However, variability can also be attributed to errors in control and coordination of the motor neurons themselves in diseases such as cerebral palsy (CP). Selective dorsal rhizotomy (SDR), a neurosurgical approach to sever sensory nerve ro...