Gait Characteristics Based on Shoe-Type Inertial Measurement Units in Healthy Young Adults during Treadmill Walking

This study investigated the gait characteristics of healthy young adults using shoe-type inertial measurement units (IMU) during treadmill walking. A total of 1478 participants were tested. Principal component analyses (PCA) were conducted to determine which principal components (PC(s)) best defined the characteristics of healthy young adults. A non-hierarchical cluster analysis was conducted to evaluate the essential gait ability, according to the results of the PC(1) score. One-way repeated analysis of variance with the Bonferroni correction was used to compare gait performances in the cluster groups. PCA outcomes indicated 76.9% variance for PC(1)–PC(6), where PC(1) (gait variability (GV): 18.5%), PC(2) (pace: 17.8%), PC(3) (rhythm and phase: 13.9%), and PC(4) (bilateral coordination: 11.2%) were the gait-related factors. All of the pace, rhythm, GV, and variables for bilateral coordination classified the gait ability in the cluster groups. We suggest that the treadmill walking task may be reliable to evaluate the gait performances, which may provide insight into understanding the decline of gait ability. The presented results are considered meaningful for understanding the gait patterns of healthy adults and may prove useful as reference outcomes for future gait analyses.