Evaluation of the Margin of Stability during Gait Initiation in Young Healthy Adults, Elderly Healthy Adults and Patients with Parkinson’s Disease: A Comparison of Force Plate and Markerless Motion Capture Systems

Abstract

Gait initiation (GI) is a functional task classically used in the literature to evaluate the capacity of individuals to maintain postural stability. Postural stability during GI can be evaluated through the “margin of stability” (MoS), a variable that is often computed from force plate recordings. The markerless motion capture system (MLS) is a recent innovative technology based on deep learning that has the potential to compute the MoS. This study tested the agreement between a force plate measurement system (FPS, gold standard) and an MLS to compute the MoS during GI. Healthy adults (young [YH] and elderly [EH]) and Parkinson’s disease patients (PD) performed GI series at spontaneous (SVC) and maximum velocity (MVC) on an FPS while being filmed by a MLS. Descriptive statistics revealed a significant effect of the group (YH vs. EH vs. PD) and velocity condition (SVC vs. MVC) on the MoS but failed to reveal any significant effect of the system (MLS vs. PFS) or interaction between factors. Bland–Altman plot analysis further showed that mean MoS biases were zero in all groups and velocity conditions, while the Bayes factor 01 indicated “moderate evidence” that both systems provided equivalent MoS. Trial-by-trial analysis of Bland–Altman plots, however, revealed that differences of >20% between the two systems did occur. Globally taken, these findings suggest that the two systems are similarly effective in detecting an effect of the group and velocity on the MoS. These findings may have important implications in both clinical and laboratory settings due to the ease of use of the MLS compared to the FPS.