Analysis of walking skill with trans-femoral prosthesis based on inertia-induced measure

A method to quantify the walking skill with trans-femoral prosthesis will be explored for better gait rehabilitation and design of prosthesis leg. Inertia of the prosthesis plays an important role in natural and smooth gaits during the swing phase. We suppose that goodness of gait is strongly related to effective use of the prosthesis inertia. So far we have proposed the inertia-induced measure as a new method to quantify the effective use of the inertia property of the prosthesis leg in the swing phase based on Riemannian distance. In this paper, we analyzed walking skill with trans-femoral prosthesis leg based on the inertia-induced measure. Gait of a prosthesis leg user was measured at 5th, 8th, and 15th months after amputation. Changes of gait, inertia-induced measure, and subjective evaluation were investigated.