The Effect of Treadmill Walking on Gait and Upper Trunk through Linear and Nonlinear Analysis Methods

Abstract

Treadmills are widely used to recover walking function in the rehabilitation field for those patients with gait disorders. Nevertheless, the ultimate goal of walking function recovery is to walk on the ground rather than on the treadmill. This study aims to determine the effect of treadmill walking on gait and upper trunk movement characteristics using wearable sensors. Eight healthy male subjects are recruited to perform 420-m straight overground walking (OW) and 5 min treadmill walking (TW), wearing 3 inertial measurement units and a pair of insole sensors. In addition to common linear features, nonlinear features, which contains sample entropy, maximal Lyapunov exponent and fractal dynamic of stride intervals (detrended fluctuation analysis), are used to compare the difference between TW and OW condition. Canonical correlation analysis is also used to indicate the correlation between upper trunk movement characteristics and gait features in the aspects of spatiotemporal parameters and gait dynamic features. The experimental results show that the treadmill can cause a shorter stride length, less stride time and worsen long-range correlation of stride intervals. And the treadmill can significantly increase the stability for both gait and upper trunk, while it can significantly reduce gait regularity during swing phase. Canonical correlation analysis results show that treadmill can reduce the correlation between gait and upper trunk features. One possible interpretation of these results is that people tend to walk more cautiously to prevent the risk of falling and neglect the coordination between gait and upper trunk when walking on the treadmill. This study can provide fundamental insightful information about the effect of treadmill walking on gait and upper trunk to support future similar studies.

The Effect of Nordic Walking Training with Poles with an Integrated Resistance Shock Absorber on the Functional Fitness of Women over the Age of 60

“…In the analysis of the obtained results, it should be taken into account that characteristics of gait with the use of various NW poles (as well as without poles) might be different as in case of gait realized on a different surface. Shi et al [33] observed differences in the structure of movement during over-ground walking and treadmill walking. They found shorter stride length, less stride time, and a reduced correlation between gait and upper trunk features on a treadmill.…”

“…It is an open question whether there is a difference in the kinematics of gait with or without NW poles as well as whether applied training influenced on biomechanical characteristics of gait realized in everyday life. Shi et al [33] suggested that changes in gait in nonstandard conditions might be related to fall risk prevention, which is very important among older people. Undoubtedly, it is an important direction for future studies.…”

Wearable Sensor-Based Gait Analysis for Age and Gender Estimation

“…They introduced a score called Comprehensive Gait Assessment using InerTial Sensor score (C-GAITS score). Effect of treadmill walking on upper trunk and gait are studied in [40] where they engaged eight subjects. Mun et al [21] introduced a CNN-based model to analyze gait estimation from various foot parameters.…”

Sensor-based Characterization of Daily Walking: A New Paradigm in Pre-frailty/Frailty Assessment

“…Further, within in-lab settings, it has been demonstrated that gait irregularity can differ between non-frail and pre-frail older adults (21). We used Sample Entropy (SampEn) assessment defined as equation (2), where was defined as the number of matches in the filtered acceleration signal length (distance function smaller than tolerance ) and as the number of matches of length ( ) (50)(51)(52)(53)(54).…”