Identification and Analysis of the Biomechanical Parameters Used for the Assessment of Normal and Pathological Gait: A Literature Review

The analysis of human gait represents a valuable tool for an early and timely identification of diseases and pathologies, as well as to follow up treatments and rehabilitation programs. However, although several research works in the literature have addressed the assessment of human gait as a diagnostic tool, few works have focused on the biomechanical parameters and metrics needed for such practice. This work presents the results of an investigation carried out to identify and analyze the biomechanical parameters used in the literature to assess the human walking, both pathological and normal. For this purpose, a literature review was conducted to detect and analyze the biomechanical parameters. A classification of these parameters based on the application area is proposed and comprises clinical, sport and exploration. These parameters are also classified according to the origin of the problem into musculoskeletal, neurological and circulatory. The biomechanical parameters identified are analyzed and discussed using set theory. The results indicate that the analysis of the spatiotemporal parameters of the gait allows a detailed and economic study of this mode of locomotion. The most used gait parameters are: step length, stride length, step width, gait speed, gait phases, cadence, swing time and stance time. On the other hand, the study of gait in the clinical area makes use of nearly all the gait parameters reported in the literature, i.e. spatial, temporal, angular, force and other specific parameters according to the type of pathology being analyzed.