Article
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Influence of Perturbation’s Type and Location on Treadmill Gait Regularity
Version 1
: Received: 28 November 2023 / Approved: 29 November 2023 / Online: 29 November 2023 (11:07:14 CET)
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
Błażkiewicz, M.; Hadamus, A. Influence of Perturbation’s Type and Location on Treadmill Gait Regularity. Appl. Sci. 2024, 14, 493. Błażkiewicz, M.; Hadamus, A. Influence of Perturbation’s Type and Location on Treadmill Gait Regularity. Appl. Sci. 2024, 14, 493.
Abstract
Background: This study aimed to investigate how external perturbations caused by the treadmill belt's acceleration (Acc) and deceleration (Dec) during the Initial Contact (Initial), Mid Stance (Mid) and Pre-Swing (ToeOff) phase affect gait regularity in young adults. Methods: Twenty-one healthy young females walked on a treadmill in a virtual environment (Grail, Motek), where four unexpected perturbations were applied to the left belt at Initial, Mid, and ToeOff. Sample Entropy (SampEn) was calculated for the center of mass (CoM) displacements, for six perturbation scenarios in three directions: anterior-posterior (AP), medial-lateral (ML), and vertical (vert), with SampEn vector lengths (m) ranging from 2 to 10. Results: The CoM displacement exhibited its highest regularity (low SampEn values) in the AP and vert-directions during Dec_ToeOff, across all m values. Similarly, this pattern was observed in the ML-direction, but exclusively for m = 2 and 4. The least regular CoM trajectories (high SampEn values) were for Dec_Mid in the AP-direction, across all m values. This trend persisted in the ML-direction, only for m = 2 and 4. However, the most irregular CoM displacements in the ML-direction occurred during Dec_ToeOff for the remaining m values. Vertical CoM displacements exhibited the highest irregularities during Dec_Initial for m ≥ 4. Conclusions: Evaluating the regularity of CoM displacements using SampEn can be a useful tool for assessing how gait perturbations are handled.
Keywords
gait; perturbations; treadmill; provoked trips; provoked slips; entropy
Subject
Biology and Life Sciences, Other
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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