Development of a non-motorized treadmill system for gait analysis and evaluation of balance ability during walking

• Main Authors: Hsing-Yu Chen, 陳星宇
• Other Authors: Wen-Hsu Sung
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/12833263331568907123

碩士 === 國立陽明大學 === 物理治療暨輔助科技學系 === 99 === Background and purpose：Ambulation is one of the most common tasks done in our daily life, and the term “gait” is used to describe the pattern of walking. Through “gait analysis”, we can understand the quality of walking performance of the subject. The devices used in gait analysis have been improved in the last thirty years. However, there are still some limitations in these devices. For example, the cost of the whole system is too high, it takes too long to complete the experiment, or the number of gait cycle can be analyzed is too small. In addition to the weakness described above, the systems used for gait analysis at present can only measure the whole body mobility, but they can’t provide any information about stability during walking. Thus, the purpose of this study was to develop a system for gait analysis and evaluation of balance ability during walking. Methods：The system developed in this study is a non-motorized treadmill with eight load cells and four footswitches. The evaluating software is a program for data acquisition and saving, and it can calculate the real-time center of pressure of the subject during walking. Under the operating of the system, we can monitor and record many parameters, for example, gait pattern and change of center of pressure, walking velocity and distance, variation of performance in each step, etc. Twenty subjects were recruited in this study for the test-retest reliability of our system, and we also compared the performance between walking overground and on our system. Each subject needed to walk overground and on the treadmill for one minute in two different speeds: “self-paced” and “as fast as possible”, and they must receive the same evaluation test one week after the first time. Results and Discussion：The test-retest reliability of the commonly used gait parameters of gait analysis (velo city, cadence, and step length) in our system are all over 0.7, and the test-retest reliability of balance parameters derived from center of pressure are over 0.5. There is significant difference in the performance between walking overground and on our system. Subjects had slow velocity, less cadence, and shorter step length while walking on the treadmill. The major cause of the significant difference in the performance between walking overground and on our system is the much more energy cost when walking on the treadmill. The friction force between the belt and the treadmill is too large so subjects suffered a great resistance. However, there is medium to high correlation in the performance between walking overground and on our system. Conclusion：Our system developed in this study has a lot of advantages: space-consuming, easy to use, quantification of evaluation, and large numbers of gait cycle can be analyzed. The results support our hypothesis that our system can do gait analysis and evaluate balance ability during walking at the same time, and it can discriminate the walking performance under different walking speed. Although the performance between walking overground and on our system is different, the test-retest reliability of our system is good, and the correlation in the performance between walking overground and on our system is high, so it can still be a good clinical evaluating tool.