Three-dimensional knee kinematics by conventional gait analysis for eleven motor tasks of daily living: typical patterns and repeatability.

The availability of detailed knee kinematic data during various activities can facilitate clinical studies of this joint. To describe in detail normal knee joint rotations in all three anatomical planes, 25 healthy subjects (aged 22-49 years) performed eleven motor tasks, including walking, step ascent and descent, each with and without sidestep or crossover turns, chair rise, mild and deep squats, and forward lunge. Kinematic data were obtained with a conventional lower-body gait analysis protocol over three trials per task. To assess the repeatability with standard indices, a representative subset of 10 subjects underwent three repetitions of the entire motion capture session. Extracted parameters with good repeatability included maximum and minimum axial rotation during turning, local extremes of the flexion curves during gait tasks, and stride times. These specific repeatable parameters can be used for task selection or power analysis when planning future clinical studies.