Trunk Control and Pelvic Angle Variability in People with Stroke during Walking – A Vector Field Analysis

Abstract

Objective Impairment in trunk control is common in hemiplegic individuals and can largely interfere with gait performance, and the trunk impairment scale (TIS) is widely used to evaluate the ability of trunk control. This study aims to further explore the association between TIS scores and the spine and pelvis movement and its variability during walking using vector field statistics. Results The canonical correlation analyses (CCA) were performed to explore the correlation between the 3-dimensional spine or pelvis angle and variability, and the TIS scores in the stance phase and swing phase separately. The CCA showed no significant correlation between the TIS score and the spine’s angle variability and no correlations were found with spine or pelvis angles as well. In contrast, a significant correlation was found between the TIS score and the pelvis angle variability during the early stance phase (P = 0.018) but not in the swing phase.