主体内,中间操作员,实验室间的变化是步态分析中不确定性的主要来源,它们的影响已经在成人人群的文献中得到了部分描述。本研究旨在将可重复性和可重复性分析扩展到儿科人群,考虑到主体内部变化引起的影响,测量设置,标记集配置,以及放置标记物和肌电图电极的相关操作员。我们评估了运动学,从两个实验室对两个健康儿童进行的步态分析中收集的动力学和肌电图输出,由两个运营商,和两个标记放置协议。两个涉及的中心先前根据其常规管道定义了通用采集程序。运动学的相似性,动力学,和肌电图曲线通过线性拟合方法的系数进行评估,以及曲线之间有和没有偏移的平均绝对变量。操作者间的变异性被发现是对运动学和动力学步态数据的整体再现性的主要贡献。相反,肌电图信号变异性的主要原因是受试者体内的可重复性,这是由于生理步幅到步幅肌肉激活变异性所致.
The intra-subject, the inter-operator, and the inter-laboratory variabilities are the main sources of uncertainties in gait analysis, and their effects have been partially described in the literature for adult populations. This study aimed to extend the repeatability and reproducibility analysis to a pediatric population, accounting for the effects induced by the intra-subject variations, the measurement setup, the marker set configuration, and the involved operators in placing markers and EMG electrodes. We evaluated kinematic, kinetic and EMG outputs collected from gait analyses performed on two healthy children in two laboratories, by two operators, and with two marker placement protocols. The two involved centers previously defined a common acquisition procedure based on their routine pipelines. The similarity of kinematic, kinetic, and EMG curves were evaluated by means of the coefficients of the Linear Fit Method, and the Mean Absolute Variability with and without the offset among curves. The inter-operator variability was found to be the main contribution to the overall reproducibility of kinematic and kinetic gait data. On the contrary, the main contribution to the variability of the EMG signals was the intra-subject repeatability that is due to the physiological stride to stride muscle activation variability.