Gait and Posture 10 (1999) 171–181
Technical note
Spatial-temporal parameters of gait: reference data and a statistical
method for normality assessment
V. Macellari
a
, C. Giacomozzi
a,
*, R. Saggini
b
a
Biomedical Engineering Laboratory, Istituto Superiore di Sanita’, Viale Regina Elena, 299 -00161 Rome, Italy
b
Department of General Kinesitherapy, Uniersity ‘G. D’Annunzio’, Chieti, Italy
Accepted 6 May 1999
Abstract
Spatial and temporal parameters of gait are of recognised clinical relevance in the assessment of motor pathologies, because
they normally occur in established combinations which can be altered by pathologies. The data collected from 596 healthy subjects
have been used to establish relationships among these parameters and a procedure to estimate deviation from normality based on
the comparison between measured values and values estimated by exploiting these relationships. The applied multiple linear
regression method (MLRM) was preliminarily validated by comparing its outputs with those of corresponding equations found
in the literature, and by applying it to a control group of 12 healthy subjects. © 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Biomechanics; Gait analysis; Statistical models
www.elsevier.com/locate/gaitpost
1. Introduction
Movement analysis features a set of methodologies
that are effective to quantify motor impairments.
Among these gait analysis has received the greatest
attention and nowadays it exploits a good number of
instruments developed to the purpose in the last 20
years. They range from simple foot-switches and elec-
trogoniometers, to sophisticated, computer-managed
pressure platforms, force platforms, and optoelectronic
motion analysers. When using these devices the
availability of reference data, or rather a reference
knowledge base, is essential for impairment assessment.
In general, such references are scarce or altogether
lacking. This is still true for spatial-temporal parame-
ters of gait, despite their wide use which results from
the simplicity and the low cost of the required
instruments.
Some of the difficulty found in defining normal value
ranges is due to the intrinsic variability of human gait,
which can be overcome only with the evaluation of
mean values for each subject and with the analysis of a
wide population sample. In addition, as recognised
since the 1960s, normal ranges of single parameters do
not constitute a sufficient reference base, but it is
essential to determine whether and how some parame-
ters, i.e. velocity, walking cycle and swing phase-occur
in normal combinations [1]. Grieve and Gear [2] iden-
tified the following relationships between step frequency
( f ) and velocity (V ):
f =
1
·(V ) +
1
(1)
f =
2
·(V )
2
(2)
where f is expressed as the number of complete cycles
per minute, V is normalised with respect to subject
height and expressed as height/s. The same authors
proposed a third equation that states a linear relation-
ship between swing time (t
s
) and cycle time (T ),
parameters that in this paper are reported as swing
phase and walking cycle, respectively (see appendix for
definitions):
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +39-06-49902864/49902089; fax: +
39-06-49387079.
E-mail address: cgiacomo@iss.it (C. Giacomozzi)
0966-6362/99/$ - see front matter © 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII:S0966-6362(99)00021-1