Dataset for "Feasibility of whole-body gait kinematics to assess the validity of the six-minute walk test over a 10-m walkway in the elderly"

Eight elderly healthy participants (7 women, aged 61–77 years) underwent the 6MWT over a 10-m rectilinear walkway. The data were collected using infrared cameras and a spherical marker covered with retroreflective tape firmly attached to a helmet worn by the participant during the 6MWT.

Four infrared cameras (ProReflex MCU 240; Qualisys, Gothenburg, Sweden) were semi-circularly aligned to allow different view angles when capturing images and were positioned 2 m away from the nearest cone as suggested in the manufacturer’s manual. The distal cone was positioned 9m away from the closest cone as manually measured using a 30-m metric tape. The participant was initially positioned to the right side of the proximal cone while waiting for the start command. All the participants were instructed to walk toward the distal cone, turn around the distal cone, return walking towards the proximal cone, turn around again and repeat until the they heard the command to stop. The acqui- sition system was calibrated before each clinical session using the manufacturer’s equipment (wand length = 749.4 mm), procedure, and software (Qualisys Track Motion 2.4, Qualisys, Gothenburg, Sweden). Calibrations were repeated, if necessary, until the mea- surement errors were all <1.0 mm [14].
A hollow-body, plastic spherical marker (diameter=0.58m) covered with retroreflective tape (model TS-02; IFM Eletrônica Ltda., SP, Brazil) was firmly attached to a helmet (total mass: ∼0.5kg), which was worn by the participant during the 6MWT.

Data acquisition started after a 5-s delay and lasted 360 s at a sampling frequency of 100 Hz. The starting command for the participant and acquisition were concurrent, and the participant was required to stop immediately after the timeout. The spatial coordinates of the helmet’s marker were exported for off-line analysis in R Project.