CLASSIFICATION OF ABLE-BODIED GAIT USING 3-D MUSCLE POWERS

The purpose of the paper was to determine if more than one gait patter n exists in able-bodied young men, by analyzing the dissimilarities in the three-dimensional (3-D) muscle powers, developed at the joints of the right lower limb. The subjects were members of the general commun ity and they were evaluated in an attempt to extract normative data. N ineteen young male volunteers participated in the study, all of them w ere able-bodied, right-sided, they did not have any orthopedic or neur ological disorders which could affect their walking pattern. Multiple gait trials were used for the classification of the peak muscle powers using cluster analysis. The detailed description of the clusters was based on a multivariate general linear model. The peak values of the 3 -D muscle power patterns for each of the lower extremity joints were d etermined by the inverse dynamic approach. Five distinct able-bodied g ait patterns were identified by means of the cluster analysis classifi cation method of 56 trials from the 19 subjects. The principal gait pa rameters identified in the classification process were: (a) at heel-st rike, the sagittal and frontal peak hip powers, (b) at mid-stance, the sagittal and frontal knee peak powers, and (c) at push-off, all sagit tal peak powers as well as the frontal hip peak powers. The variabilit y observed in able-bodied gait may be the result of multiple normal dy namic strategies employed by the different subjects. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.