Gait analysis using 3D motion reconstruction with an activity-specific tracking protocol

In this paper, we present a new gait analysis method using 3D body motion reconstruction with an activity-specific tracking protocol. A kinematic chain modeling the movement of lower extremities was constructed for general lower body activity monitoring. By exploring the nature of walking, a constrained forward-backward statistical linearized sigma-point Kalman Smoother with periodic state vector resetting was developed. This tracks the dynamic joint configuration during walking. Direct experimental evaluation was provided by step length computation as well as complete motion reconstruction. This method has demonstrated stable long term tracking of walking and yields greater than 95% accuracy for step length estimation.