Assessment of Gait Parameters in Virtual Environment

Abstract

Human gait is the result of complex interplay of the nervous, musculoskeletal and cardiorespiratory systems. Unimpaired cognition and executive control are needed for safe walking. Balance and gait problems may be precursors of falls, which are the leading cause of elderly injuries. This article concerns using the Corridor application, run on the multi-sensory virtual reality system (CAREN, Computer Assisted Rehabilitation ENvironment) to evaluate chosen gait parameters of elderly participants. The presented application influences the conditions of postural stability by skewing the image of space in different directions, especially side to side. This provoking fall prevention strategy can be described by set of changed gait parameters. Differences are observed in the hip and ankle joints, spatio-temporal parameters and the results that differed during the gait with dual-task. To better evaluate the gait asymmetry the arm swing asymmetry and step length symmetry indices were used.