Range of motion and repeatability of knee kinematics for 11 clinically relevant motor tasks

Abstract

Standard gait analysis reports knee joint rotations in the three anatomical planes without addressing their different levels of reliability. Most clinical studies also restrict analysis to knee flexion-extension, because knee abduction-adduction and axial rotation are small with respect to the corresponding amount of measurement artefact. This study analyses a set of 11 motor tasks, in order to identify those that are adequately repeatable and that can induce greater motion at the knee than walking. Ten volunteers (mean ± SD age: 29 ± 9 years) each underwent three motion analysis sessions on different days with a standard gait analysis system and protocol. In each session they performed normal walking, walking with sidestep and crossover turns, ascent onto and descent off a step, descent with sidestep and crossover turns, chair rise, mild and deep squats, and lunge. Range and repeatability of motions in the three anatomical planes were compared by ANOVA. The sidestep turns showed a range of axial rotation significantly larger than that in walking (about 8°), while maintaining similar levels of repeatability. Ascent, chair rise, squat, and lunge showed greater flexion ranges than walking; among these, ascent was the most repeatable. The results show that turning increases knee axial rotation in young subjects significantly. Further, squats and lunges, currently of large interest in orthopaedics and sports research, have smaller repeatability, likely accounted for to the smaller constraints than in the traditional motor tasks.

Repeatability of the three dimensional kinematics of the pelvis, spine and lower limbs while performing selected exercises

“…The knee's range of motion was under special consideration because of the frequency of injuries in sport activities. The repeatability of knee motion measurement turned out to be the lowest during squat and lung exercises when compared to eleven motor tasks [23]. In our study we analyzed the hip, the ankle and the knee joints and the pelvic and the spine motion, and we observed the highest repeatability during the two-leg squat and the forward bending in a sagittal plane.…”

Biomechanical analysis of the post-cam mechanism in a TKA: comparison between conventional and semi-constrained insert designs

“…Starting from 0°, the knee flexion during walking is up to 65°, during the step descent is up to 68°, during the step ascent is up to 93°and for the squat is up to 120°. Each movement follows a standard kinematics characteristic for the analysed movement as also obtained from in vivo gait lab analyses (Desloovere et al 2010). To allow a following validation for contact forces outputs, these settings also match experimental tests performed in in vitro analyses on cadaver legs (Innocenti, Follador, et al 2009;Victor 2009;Delport et al 2013).…”

Exploring the Development Requirements for Virtual Reality Gait Analysis

“…Previous studies demonstrated that Mo-Cap for gait and motion analysis is remarkably accurate, and it contains both three-dimensional and temporal information in comparison to traditional methods for obtaining human mobility data. Adaptability and the customisation of such systems allow researchers and clinicians to focus their research specifically to the area that is of most interest to them, allowing the capturing of motion data related to selected MSK elements [34]. However, the majority of such systems require a large deployment footprint and multiple sensors positioned in the periphery in order to acquire any useful data, as depicted in Figure 3 below.…”

“…Clinicians and researchers have begun to experiment and develop tools with such devices to assist motion-driven tasks [34,36,37]. A sufficient amount of interest has been an aid for rehabilitation purposes [37,38].…”