Gait Assessment for Multiple Sclerosis Patients Using Microsoft Kinect

TL;DR

This paper presents a cost-effective Kinect-based framework for assessing gait abnormalities in multiple sclerosis patients, introducing novel indices that quantify gait deviations from healthy patterns.

Contribution

It introduces new gait indices based on dynamic time warping for MS patients and demonstrates the feasibility of using Kinect for clinical gait assessment.

Findings

New gait indices correlate with clinical scores

Kinect-based system effectively characterizes gait abnormalities

Framework enables inexpensive gait analysis for MS patients

Abstract

Gait analysis of patients with neurological disorders, including multiple sclerosis (MS), is important for rehabilitation and treatment. The Mircrosoft Kinect sensor, which was developed for motion recognition in gaming applications, is an ideal candidate for an inexpensive system providing the capability for human gait analysis. In this research, we develop a framework to quantify the gait abnormality of MS patients using a Kinect for Windows camera. In addition to the previously introduced gait indices, a novel set of MS gait indices based on the concept of dynamic time warping is introduced. The newly introduced indices can characterize a patient's gait pattern as a whole and quantify a subject's gait distance from the healthy population. We will investigate the correlation of gait indices with the multiple sclerosis walking scale (MSWS) and the clinical ambulation score. This work establishes the feasibility of using the Kinect sensor for clinical gait assessment for MS patients.