Development and validation of a 3D kinematic-based method for determining gait events during overground walking

A new signal processing algorithm is developed for quantifying heel strike (HS) and toe-off (TO) event times solely from measured heel and toe coordinates during overground walking. It is based on a rough estimation of relevant local 3D position signals. An original piecewise linear fitting method is applied to these local signals to accurately identify HS and TO times without the need of using arbitrary experimental coefficients. We validated the proposed method with nine healthy subjects and a total of 322 trials. The extracted temporal gait events were compared to reference data obtained from a force plate. HS and TO times were identified with a temporal accuracy ± precision of 0.3 ms ± 7.1 ms, and –2.8 ms ± 7.2 ms in comparison with reference data defined with a force threshold of 10 N. This algorithm improves the accuracy of the HS and TO detection. Furthermore, it can be used to perform stride-by-stride analysis during overground walking with only recorded heel and toe coordinates.