Evaluation of a visual method to calculate temporal parameters.

DE GRUCCI, CARLA; EWINS, DAVID J.; SHAHEEN, ALIAH; CATALFAMO FORMENTO, PAOLA

Buenos Aires

Congreso; IEEE Argencon; 2016

IEEE

Analysis of human movement provides systematic and quantitative information of movement. A number of tools and methods have been proposed to detect events that occur during walking. The events are then used to calculate spatiotemporal parameters (STP), commonly used for the characterization of gait. Conventional video cameras were proposed as an alternative for gait event detection. However, the accuracy in the calculation of STP has not been evaluated yet. The aim of this study is to evaluate the accuracy of a fully visual method using these cameras in the calculation of STP. The study involved 10 healthy subjects, walking at three speeds. Two gait events (initial contact and foot off) were detected and four temporal parameters (TP) were calculated: step time, stance time, double support time and cadence.For detection of gait events, the mean of the absolute differences between the visual method and the gold standard was less than 45 ms. In the calculation of TP, the absolute mean difference remained smaller than 25 ms. These differences are in the range of those reported by other authors. The statistical analysis showed significant differences in the calculation of parameters for different speeds, but not for the methods (except for the time of double support). With these results, we conclude that the method of visual detection of events can be considered as an option for calculating temporal parameters in the clinical setting.