Procedure for quantitative comparison of ground reaction data

An analytical method for quantitative and detailed comparison of different ground reaction force patterns is described. It is based on suitable processing of the 3-D components of the ground reaction force and is essentially composed of three main steps: verification of the regular recurrence of measurement conditions, normalization, and data comparison. The first step is to check that the acquired data are not affected by inertial predominance in the direction of progression. Normalization involves the amplitude of force, the application point displacements and the stance-phase duration. Data comparison utilizes a dedicated implementation of an appropriate statistical approach to estimate significant differences between two suitable and typical ground reaction force patterns. Two practical cases are presented in detail to demonstrate the entire analytical procedure.