Validation of the kinect for gait analysis using the GAITRite walkway

Accurate, non-intrusive and straightforward techniques for gait quality analysis can provide important information concerning the fall risk of a person. For this purpose an algorithm was developed which can measure step length and step time using the Kinect depth image. The validity of the measured step length and time is determined using the GAITRite walkway as a ground truth. The results of this validation confirm that the Kinect is well-suited for determining general parameters of a walking sequence (a Spearmans Correlation Coefficient (SCC) of 0.94 for average step length and 0.75 for average step time per walk), but we furthermore show that determining accurate results for single steps is more difficult (SCC of 0.74 for step length and 0.43 for step time for each step), making it harder to measure more complex gait parameters such as e.g. gait symmetry.