Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Research Institute MOVE Amsterdam, VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Gait Posture. 2014;39(1):478-84. doi: 10.1016/j.gaitpost.2013.08.022. Epub 2013 Aug 31.
Instrumented treadmills are increasingly used in gait research, although the imposed walking speed is suggested to affect gait performance. A feedback-controlled treadmill that allows subjects to walk at their preferred speed, i.e. functioning in a self-paced (SP) mode, might be an attractive alternative, but could disturb gait through accelerations of the belt. We compared SP with fixed speed (FS) treadmill walking, and also considered various feedback modes. Nineteen healthy subjects walked on a dual-belt instrumented treadmill. Spatio-temporal, kinematic and kinetic gait parameters were derived from both the average stride patterns and stride-to-stride variability. For 15 out of 70 parameters significant differences were found between SP and FS. These differences were smaller than 1cm, 1°, 0.2 Nm and 0.2 W/kg for respectively stride length and width, joint kinematics, moments and powers. Since this is well within the normal stride variability, these differences were not considered to be clinically relevant, indicating that SP walking is not notably affected by belt accelerations. The long-term components of walking speed variability increased during SP walking (43%, p<0.01), suggesting that SP allows for more natural stride variability. Differences between SP feedback modes were predominantly found in the timescales of walking speed variability, while the gait pattern was similar between modes. Overall, the lack of clinically significant differences in gait pattern suggests that SP walking is a suitable alternative to fixed speed treadmill walking in gait analysis.
仪器化跑步机在步态研究中越来越多地被使用，尽管所施加的步行速度被认为会影响步态表现。一种允许受试者以其偏好速度行走的反馈控制跑步机，即功能在自定步速（SP）模式下，可能是一种有吸引力的替代方案，但可能会通过带的加速而干扰步态。我们比较了 SP 和固定速度（FS）跑步机行走，并且还考虑了各种反馈模式。19 名健康受试者在双带仪器化跑步机上行走。时空、运动学和动力学步态参数来自平均步幅模式和步幅间变异性。对于 70 个参数中的 15 个，在 SP 和 FS 之间发现了显著差异。这些差异小于 1cm、1°、0.2Nm 和 0.2W/kg，分别为步长和步宽、关节运动学、力矩和功率。由于这在正常步幅变异性范围内，因此这些差异不被认为具有临床意义，表明 SP 行走不受带加速度的显著影响。SP 行走时，行走速度变异性的长期成分增加（43%，p<0.01），表明 SP 允许更大的自然步幅变异性。SP 反馈模式之间的差异主要出现在行走速度变异性的时间尺度上，而模式之间的步态模式相似。总体而言，步态模式中缺乏临床显著差异表明 SP 行走是步态分析中固定速度跑步机行走的合适替代方案。
