A regressed phase analysis for coupled joint systems.

This study aims to address shortcomings of the relative phase analysis, a widely used method for assessment of coupling among joints of the lower limb. Goniometric data from 15 individuals with spastic diplegic cerebral palsy were recorded from the hip and knee joints during ambulation on a flat surface, and from a single healthy individual with no known motor impairment, over at least 10 gait cycles. The minimum relative phase (MRP) revealed substantial disparity in the timing and severity of the instance of maximum coupling, depending on which reference frame was selected: MRP(knee-hip) differed from MRP(hip-knee) by 16.1±14% of gait cycle and 50.6±77% difference in scale. Additionally, several relative phase portraits contained discontinuities which may contribute to error in phase feature extraction. These vagaries can be attributed to the predication of relative phase analysis on a transformation into the velocity-position phase plane, and the extraction of phase angle by the discontinuous arc-tangent operator. Here, an alternative phase analysis is proposed, wherein kinematic data is transformed into a profile of joint coupling across the entire gait cycle. By comparing joint velocities directly via a standard linear regression in the velocity-velocity phase plane, this regressed phase analysis provides several key advantages over relative phase analysis including continuity, commutativity between reference frames, and generalizability to many-joint systems.