Partial Directed Coherence applied in physiotherapy data

In physiotherapy, the understanding of human motion is crucial to the development of rehabilitation techniques. This work applies Partial Directed Coherence (PDC) concept to determine directional flow among kinematic and electromyographic data from two different running techniques. PDC is a Granger causality approach, that uses autoregressive estimative to calculate causal interaction between two processes. The results indicated that each running technique has a distinct causal functionality, both in kinematic and electromyographic signals. The influences analysis presented a promising scenario, where the results can be used to understand the normal motion during running, to diagnose movement patterns that may predispose to injury, to understand the effect of and to develop new treatment running techniques and to evaluate the effect of prevention and rehabilitation programs.