Automating Timed Up and Go Phase Segmentation and Gait Analysis via the tugturn Markerless 3D Pipeline

TL;DR

This paper introduces 'tugturn', a Python software pipeline that automates markerless 3D analysis of the Timed Up and Go test, including phase segmentation, gait detection, and stability metrics, supporting clinical decision-making.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel, reproducible, markerless 3D TUG analysis pipeline that integrates phase segmentation, gait event detection, and advanced metrics, enhancing clinical and research applications.

Findings

Provides a complete, reproducible workflow with HTML and CSV outputs.

Combines phase segmentation, gait detection, and stability analysis in one pipeline.

Includes a test example demonstrating pipeline functionality.

Abstract

Instrumented Timed Up and Go (TUG) analysis can support clinical and research decision-making, but robust and reproducible markerless pipelines are still limited. We present \textit{tugturn.py}, a Python-based workflow for 3D markerless TUG processing that combines phase segmentation, gait-event detection, spatiotemporal metrics, intersegmental coordination, and dynamic stability analysis. The pipeline uses spatial thresholds to segment each trial into stand, first gait, turning, second gait, and sit phases, and applies a relative-distance strategy to detect heel-strike and toe-off events within valid gait windows. In addition to conventional kinematics, \textit{tugturn} provides Vector Coding outputs and Extrapolated Center of Mass (XCoM)-based metrics. The software is configured through TOML files and produces reproducible artifacts, including HTML reports, CSV tables, and quality-assurance visual outputs. A complete runnable example is provided with test data and command-line instructions. This manuscript describes the implementation, outputs, and reproducibility workflow of \textit{tugturn} as a focused software contribution for markerless biomechanical TUG analysis.