Title :
Statistical analysis of gait maturation in children based on probability density functions
Author :
Wu, Yunfeng ; Zhong, Zhangting ; Lu, Meng ; He, Jia
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Commun. Eng., Xiamen Univ., Xiamen, China
fDate :
Aug. 30 2011-Sept. 3 2011
Abstract :
Analysis of gait patterns in children is useful for the study of maturation of locomotor control. In this paper, we utilized the Parzen-window method to estimate the probability density functions (PDFs) of the stride interval for 50 children. With the estimated PDFs, the statistical measures, i.e., averaged stride interval (ASI), variation of stride interval (VSI), PDF skewness (SK), and PDF kurtosis (KU), were computed for the gait maturation in three age groups (aged 3-5 years, 6-8 years, and 10-14 years) of young children. The results indicated that the ASI and VSI values are significantly different between the three age groups. The VSI is decreased rapidly until 8 years of age, and then continues to be decreased at a slower rate. The SK values of the PDFs for all of the three age groups are positive, which shows a slight imbalance in the stride interval distribution within each age group. In addition, the decrease of the KU values of the PDFs is age-dependent, which suggests the effects of the musculo-skeletal growth on the gait maturation in young children.
Keywords :
gait analysis; statistical analysis; PDF kurtosis; PDF skewness; Parzen window method; age 10 yr to 14 yr; averaged stride interval; gait maturation; locomotor control; musculoskeletal growth; probability density function; statistical analysis; variation of stride interval; Aging; Handheld computers; Histograms; Legged locomotion; Pediatrics; Probability density function; Time series analysis; Adolescent; Aging; Child; Child, Preschool; Computer Simulation; Data Interpretation, Statistical; Female; Gait; Humans; Male; Models, Biological; Models, Statistical; Reproducibility of Results; Sensitivity and Specificity; Statistical Distributions; Walking;
Conference_Titel :
Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBC, 2011 Annual International Conference of the IEEE
Conference_Location :
Boston, MA
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4244-4121-1
Electronic_ISBN :
1557-170X
DOI :
10.1109/IEMBS.2011.6090476