Analysis of Human Gait Bilateral Symmetry for Functional Assessment after an Orthopaedic Surgery

We proposed a color marker based computer vision system which can provide temporal-spatial and kinematic information of human gait. This system provides quantitative gait pattern information for clinicians to evaluate the rehabilitation progress of the patients who had undertaken total knee replacement (TKR) and/or total hip replacement (THR) surgeries. The symmetry between left leg and right leg is a very useful feature for this evaluation purpose. To calculate this parameter, we introduced a new curve feature to describe the gait pattern. This curve feature serves as people’s walking signature. The symmetry is denoted by dynamic time warping (DTW) distance of this walking signature. Through experiments, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed system.