Taylor, Simon, Begg, Rezaul and Best, Russell (2001) Inter and Intra-Limb Processes of Gait Control. In: Proceedings of the 2nd Conference of the Victorian Chapter of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society: Biomedical Research in 2001. Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, pp. 222-226.

Abstract

This paper investigates a method for characterising the symmetric status of gait and the inter and intra-limb relationship of gait control. Previous research shows fluctuations of intra-limb stride intervals to have long-range correlations indicating scale-free (fractal like) phenomena. The presence of this phenomena in gait, and a method for its identification (detrended fluctuation analysis) provides a new approach to gait analysis. A single, healthy young adult subject, completed a thirty-minute treadmill test. Minimum foot clearance values and the time interval between their occurrences were taken at these successive bilateral events. Using detrended fluctuation analysis, we computed α(self-similarity parameter), a measure of the degree to which a single value in a series of data is correlated with a previous and subsequent value over different time scales. The results demonstrate long-range correlations of intra-limb spatial and temporal parameters in both limbs. The computed selfsimilarity parameter (a) indicates a symmetric relationship between limbs for temporal processes of gait. However, a similar computation and comparison for spatial processes of gait reveal an asymmetric relationship. The inter-limb spatial relationship demonstrates long-range correlations. The investigation demonstrates a new method for classifying gait symmetry and has implications for furthering knowledge on the coordination processes of gait control.

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