3D joint dynamics analysis of healthy children's gait.

The 3D joint moments and 2D joint powers have been largely explored in the literature of healthy children's gait, in particular to compare them with pathologic subjects' gait. However, no study reported on 3D joint power in children which could be due to the difficulties in interpreting the results. Recently, the analysis of the 3D angle between the joint moment and the joint angular velocity vectors has been proposed in order to help 3D joint power interpretation. Our hypothesis is that this 3D angle may help in characterizing the level of gait maturation. The present study explores 3D joint moments, 3D joint power and the proposed 3D angle for both children's and adults' gaits to highlight differences in the strategies used. The results seem to confirm that children have an alternative strategy of mainly ankle stabilization and hip propulsion compared to the adults' strategy of mainly ankle resistance and propulsion and hip stabilization. In the future, the same 3D angle analysis should be applied to different age groups for better describing the evolution of the 3D joint dynamic strategies during the growth.