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. 2017 May 2;17(5):1002.
doi: 10.3390/s17051002.

An Acceleration-Based Gait Assessment Method for Children with Cerebral Palsy

Xiang Chen  1 , Songmei Liao  2 , Shuai Cao  3 , De Wu  4 , Xu Zhang  5
Affiliations

An Acceleration-Based Gait Assessment Method for Children with Cerebral Palsy

Xiang Chen et al. Sensors (Basel). .

Abstract

With the aim of providing an objective tool for motion disability assessment in clinical diagnosis and rehabilitation therapy of cerebral palsy (CP) patients, an acceleration-based gait assessment method was proposed in this paper. To capture gait information, three inertial measurement units (IMUs) were placed on the lower trunk and thigh, respectively. By comparing differences in the gait acceleration modes between children with CP and healthy subjects, an assessment method based on grey relational analysis and five gait parameters, including Pearson coefficient, variance ratio, the number of extreme points, harmonic ratio and symmetry was established. Twenty-two children with cerebral palsy (7.49 ± 2.86 years old), fourteen healthy adults (24.2 ± 1.55 years old) and ten healthy children (7.03 ± 1.49 years old) participated in the gait data acquisition experiment. The results demonstrated that, compared to healthy subjects, the symptoms and severity of motor dysfunction of CP children could result in abnormality of the gait acceleration modes, and the proposed assessment method was able to effectively evaluate the degree gait abnormality in CP children.

Keywords: acceleration; cerebral palsy (CP); gait assessment; grey relational analysis.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The founding sponsors had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, and in the decision to publish the results.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Locations of: (a) IMUs, AP, SI and ML represent the anterior–posterior, superior–inferior, medio-lateral directions respectively; (b) FSRs (1: toe, 2: fifth metatarsophalangeal, 3: first metatarsophalangeal, and 4: heel).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Gait acceleration from (a) a healthy subject; (b) a CP child.
Figure 3
Figure 3
The flow chart of our gait assessment model.
Figure 4
Figure 4
An example of an unbiased autocorrelation sequence of AP-W acceleration signals during walking.
Figure 5
Figure 5
AGGs of AD1~AD4 and Characteristic Gait Graph (CGG).
Figure 6
Figure 6
Comparisons between CGG and: (a) AGGs of AD group; (b) AGGs of TD group; (c) AGGs of three children with CP.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Comparisons between CGG and: (a) AGGs of AD group; (b) AGGs of TD group; (c) AGGs of three children with CP.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Five features and assessment scores of all subjects. (a) Pearson coefficient (P); (b) Variance ratio (VR); (c) The number of extreme points (N); (d) Harmonic ratio (HR); (e) Symmetry (S); (f) Assessment scores. “*” indicates statistically significant differences.
Figure 8
Figure 8
The gait assessment scores of all subjects.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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