How can we measure walking gait?

Maintaining a healthy gait is an important part of ageing well, and our ability to measure and describe its characteristics can help us to better understand how to do this.

In the previous video, we saw that one way to study gait is to attach sensors to a person to measure how different parts of the body move. However, this information alone does not give a complete picture of what is happening to the musculoskeletal system.

In this video, Dr Claudia Mazzà from The University of Sheffield, explains her latest research which combines sensor measurements from the gait lab with information about an individual’s unique anatomy, allowing clinicians to see how patients are using their muscles and joints as they walk.

These models can be used to guide treatment, test how well treatments are working and find out more about how different conditions progress over time.