A simple measure of overall walking effort would be valuable to patients and clinicians to select suitable treatment interventions and to monitor progress. In this paper, the reproducibility and responsiveness of seven potentially useful clinical measures of walking effort are presented. These walking effort outcomes were derived from a compass gait model and space curve displacement, acceleration and differential geometry theory. The walking effort outcomes were primarily calculated from the motion of a point on or in the rigid body pelvis as a patient walked cyclically. These motion data were collected from eight healthy volunteers who each walked on a treadmill for 4 min, at four different speeds, repeated twice. Four of the seven walking effort outcomes clearly had better measurement properties. The path length ratio, acceleration ratio, Frenet–Serret torsion and Frenet–Serret energy had excellent reproducibility (ICC>0.8) and responded to a small change in walking speed (< 0.03 m/s) compared to two versions of the biomechanical efficiency quotient and the Frenet–Serret curvature. The measurement properties of most outcomes were not consistently improved using a point in versus on the pelvis. This study presents four biomechanical walking effort outcomes that have good theoretical underpinnings, excellent reproducibility and responsiveness, are simple and easy to administer with relatively inexpensive equipment, and can be used in real world environments. However, future work must investigate the minimal clinically important change of these outcome measures before they can be used in clinical practice.

中文翻译：

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步行努力的简单生物力学测量的测量特性

简单的整体步行努力量度对患者和临床医生选择合适的治疗干预措施并监测进展情况将很有价值。在本文中，提出了步行努力的七个潜在有用的临床措施的重现性和响应性。这些步行努力的结果是从罗盘步态模型，空间曲线位移，加速度和微分几何理论得出的。步行努力的结果主要是根据患者循环行走时刚体骨盆上或骨盆上某个点的运动来计算的。这些运动数据来自八名健康志愿者，他们各自以四种不同的速度在跑步机上行走4分钟，重复两次。七个步行努力结果中的四个显然具有更好的测量属性。路径长度比，加速比，与两种形式的生物力学效率商和Frenet-Serret曲率相比，Frenet-Serret扭转和Frenet-Serret能量具有出色的可重复性（ICC> 0.8），并且对步行速度的微小变化（<0.03 m / s）做出了响应。与骨盆上的点相比，大多数结果的测量属性并未得到持续改善。这项研究提出了四个生物机械步行努力成果，这些成果具有良好的理论基础，出色的可重复性和响应能力，使用相对便宜的设备即可简单，轻松地进行管理，并且可以在现实环境中使用。但是，未来的工作必须研究这些结果指标在临床上的最小影响，然后才能用于临床实践。