Comparison of Chaotic Parameters between Men and Women in a Treadmill Walking

抄録

A gait analysis was performed to estimate chaotic behavior of the human body motion. The purpose of this study is to apply the chaos analysis technique to joint motions of both upper and lower extremities and to compare their characteristics between men and women. A novel approach is to extend the nonlinear chaos analysis to eleven major joints including the neck and both the upper and the lower extremities. The maximal Lyapunov exponent (MLE) was calculated from the time series of the flexion-extension angle of each joint. Differences in MLE values showed no statistical significance between the right and the left sides, nor between men and women for every joint. For overall joints, however, the MLE values were found to be statistically different between the two genders (p<0.05). The correlation analysis between two different joints also showed statistical difference between the two genders. These results will address differences in the chaotic characteristics of the joint movements between men and women during the treadmill walking.