Quantitative evaluation concerning principal gait locomotion pattern of a trans-femoral amputee with a prosthetic limb based on the intersegmental coordination

Abstract

In human gait locomotion analysis, which is one useful method for efficient physical rehabilitation to define various quantitative evaluation indices, ground reaction force, joint angle and joint loads are measured during gait. On the other hand, the analysis of the correlation in the recorded joint motion has extracted a few simultaneously activating segmental coordination patterns in a past study. Moreover, it is thought that the structure of the intersegmental coordination is attracting attention to an expected relationship with a control strategy. However, this procedure has not been applied to trans-femoral prosthetic gait locomotion yet. In this paper, joint angles as kinematic parameters applied on the lower limb of healthy subjects and trans-femoral amputee with a prosthetic limb during their gait locomotion are investigated by performing the experiments of gait measurement. Next, joint angles are analyzed by applying the evaluation method of intersegmental coordination pattern using singular value decomposition to data of joint angles as the experimental results and trajectories of center of gravity are obtained. Then, mutual comparative verification and quantitative evaluation of them as constitutive principle is performed. As a result of the experiments and consideration, the effectiveness of the method using singular value decomposition is validated because it can quantitatively express comprehensive physical phenomena for trans-femoral prosthetic gait. Obtained locomotion patterns may be useful for refining the rehabilitation program of trans-femoral amputee.

Keywords

• medical and welfare assistance
• biomechanics
• trans-femoral amputation
• prosthetic limb
• walking and gait
• kinematics
• joint angle
• intersegmental coordination
• singular value decomposition