At Basalt rehabilitation clinic The Hague, gait analysis is currently mostly observational. No objective measures are used and there is no systematic use of recordings. The aim of this research is to find and verify an accessible instrumented gait analysis method that could be im
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At Basalt rehabilitation clinic The Hague, gait analysis is currently mostly observational. No objective measures are used and there is no systematic use of recordings. The aim of this research is to find and verify an accessible instrumented gait analysis method that could be implemented in the current care path at Basalt The Hague. The current instrumented gait analysis systems are marker-based. Recently more research has been done with regard to markerless systems, since markers bring along artefacts like the soft-tissue artefact. Markerless systems work with pose detection through artificial intelligence. A limitation of these pose detection systems, is that it is still in a research phase and did not make its way into the clinics yet. In a comparison of the accuracy of open-source pose estimation methods for measuring gait kinematics, OpenPose has been found most accurate.
For this research a program of requirements is made for implementation of instrumented gait analysis in the clinic at Basalt The Hague. The coordinates of anatomical landmarks obtained with OpenPose are processed to kinematic parameters. Besides, spatiotemporal parameters are looked into. A gait analysis set-up (consisting of tripods and mobile phone cameras) with OpenPose is proposed and tested to verify the accuracy. The OpenPose outcomes are compared with the the Simi motion capture system at Basalt Delft. By determining the Pearson correlation coefficients between OpenPose and Simi motion capture system, the kinematic parameters are verified. The mean standard deviations of the repeated recordings with OpenPose are used to determine the repeatability of OpenPose.
With this research is verified that OpenPose is repeatable and that kinematic parameters of the hip and knee are highly correlated to the standard method of instrumented gait analysis used at Basalt. Therefore can be concluded that OpenPose pose detection seems a promising method for determining kinematic and possibly also spatiotemporal parameters of gait. With follow-up research, especially clinical validation, and further development of the data processing, the first steps can be made towards implementation of accessible instrumented gait analysis in the current care path at Basalt The Hague, and possibly other locations and/or institutions.