An investigation of the Spatiotemporal Parameters of Gait and Margins of Stability throughout Adulthood - Dataset

This dataset is contains data on:
- Anthropometric measurements: age (years), body mass (kg); body height (cm), leg length (mm) and BMI.

- Gait parameters: walking speed (m/s), stride time (s), stride length (m), step time (s), cadence (steps/min), stance phase (%), double support phase (%), single support phase (%), step length (m) and step width (m).
- Margins of Stability: Anterior-posterior Margin of Stability (mm), medio-lateral Margin of Stability (mm).
Eligibility criteria for voluntary participants were adults between 20 and 89 years, categorized into seven decades. Participants were excluded if they had self-reported visual impairments, antalgic gait pattern, abnormal mobility in the lower limbs or any known neurological or orthopaedic disorder that could influence motor performance and balance.
An instrumented gait analysis was performed at a movement analysis laboratory equipped with a three-dimensional motion capture system with eight cameras (Vicon T10, 100 Hz., ©Vicon Motion Systems Ltd., Oxford, UK, 100 fps, resolution 1 Megapixel (1120×896), 3 AMTI type OR 6–7 force plates (1000 fps, 46×50×8 cm) and 1 AccuGait® (1000 fps) force plate. Reflective markers were placed on anatomical landmarks on the subject’s body corresponding to the full body Plug-In-Gait model (30). Subjects walked barefoot over a 12-meter-long walkway at a self-selected walking speed, with the middle 6 meters used for data collection. In total, a minimum of six valid walking trials (i.e. visibility of all markers, presence of clean left and right heel strikes) were recorded. The data collection took place between April 2015 and January 2016.
Marker trajectories were labelled using the Vicon Nexus 1.8.x software. Based on the force plate data and ankle marker trajectories, events of foot strike and foot off were determined. The gait cycle was calculated based on left and right heel marker trajectories.
The total body centre of mass was calculated using the standard Vicon clinical model (Plug-In-Gait application for Nexus software). The .c3d-files were then exported to Matlab (R2017a for Windows) and through a custom written script the MoS was calculated according to the formulas of the extrapolated centre of mass as described by Hof et al. (2005) - The condition for dynamic stability, J Biomech (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbiomech.2004.03.025). The Margin of Stability was defined as the minimum distance between the centre of pressure and the extrapolated centre of mass along the medio-lateral and anterior-posterior axis during the single support phases.
Spatiotemporal parameters were calculated from the left and right ankle marker trajectories through a custom written script in Matlab.