A novel method for displaying gait and clinical movement analysis data

Plotting kinematic and kinetic data of a patient’s movement patterns relative to normative values (i.e., mean and ±1 S.D.) is a common method used by clinicians to visually assess deviations and interpret the patient’s gait analysis data. This method of data interpretation is often time consuming and complex, especially when the process requires the inspection of a plethora of line graphs for numerous variables that are displayed across several report pages. In this paper we propose an alternate method for displaying movement pattern deviations relative to normative data by color-coding the magnitude and the direction of the deviation. An advantage of this approach is that a single page summary of all the deviation magnitudes can be displayed simultaneously, in a manner that is concise, visually effective and reduces complexity. The purpose of this paper is to describe the algorithmic development of the color-coding method.