Markerless motion capture for 3D clinical gait analysis (IMAGine)
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Is Markerless three-dimensional motion Analysis a viable alternative to traditional Gait analysis? (IMAGine study)
IRAS ID
334786
Contact name
Henrike Greaves
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Alder Hey Children's Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 1 months, 4 days
Research summary
Many children have impaired walking patterns which are assessed in clinical gait laboratories. The clinical gait analysis is used to inform and evaluate outcomes of clinical intervention, such as orthopaedic or neurological interventions. The current gold standard of gait analysis requires the placement of small markers on the skin in accurate anatomical locations. The 3D positions of these markers are measured using infrared cameras and the results are shown as joint angle and moment graphs. This is a highly technical analysis, is time consuming, requires minimal clothing, can trigger anxiety, and thereby may lead to an unnatural walking pattern. Many children, especially children with sensory processing difficulties often struggle to tolerate the marker application, and many young children struggle to comply with instructions, leading to unusable assessment results. Children that require walking aids have issues also due to these devices obstructing cameras' view of markers.
If marker-based gait analysis cannot be carried out, the current standard is that a clinically trained assessor describes the gait of the child based on videos, which is a subjective assessment and does not allow their gait abnormalities to be accurately assessed.
To overcome these problems new computer vision systems can analyse gait based on video data without the use of any markers. Theia3D is an example of this markerless approach that uses deep neural networks to recognise the position of 140 human body features to calculate joint angle and moment graphs.
However, without comparison to the current gold standard of marker-based gait analysis, in children with impaired walking patterns, the true accuracy of markerless systems is unknown.
Therefore, this research projects aims to
(1) validate markerless technology as an interchangeable method to the existing clinical gold standard marker-based approach.
(2) assess the accuracy of markerless technology in children with underlying walking impairments such as toe walking, intoeing, out-toeing.REC name
North West - Liverpool Central Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
24/NW/0361
Date of REC Opinion
9 Jan 2025
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion