Overview of movement analysis and gait features

This chapter provides an overview of the commonly used motion analysis approaches and techniques and the key features that are extracted from movement patterns for characterizing gait. The ultimate goal of gait analysis should be to provide reliable, objective data on which to base clinical decisions (Kaufman, 1998). Thousands of gait features/parameters have been used over the years. Selection of the correct gait features forms an important part of the research process, and often the success of the research outcomes depends heavily on selecting the most appropriate gait features. Analysis tools based on both statistical and machine-learning techniques use various types of gait features, ranging from the basic and directly measurable parameters to parameters that have undergone significant data processing and treatments. In this chapter, we attempt to introduce the commonly used methods to extract these features for use with the various statistical and computational intelligence analysis tools