A historical review of gait analysis

Healthcare professionals have long been concerned with the assessment of human gait, but only recently were they able to utilize instrumental gait analysis in routine clinical practice for diagnosis, and to guide the selection of treatment methods for complex musculo-skeletal and neurological disorders. The development of motion analysis systems has progressed through several stages from simple to more sophisticated, versatile, multimodal, and accurate equipment. Several computerized motion analysis systems are now commercially available for the measurement of human gait. These vary in their design and performance. The purpose of this review is to summarize briefly the history and advances in the technology of instrumental gait analysis, especially during the past 3 decades. Further, it is hoped that this review will give clinical practitioners and researchers a general insight into the variety of measurement systems that are currently available for gait analysis and enable them to make an informed choice of the motion analysis system that best suits their clinical needs.