Walk-DMC

A Rozumalski, KM Steele, MH Schwartz (2017) “Muscle synergies are similar when typically developing children walk on a treadmill at different speeds and slopes.” Journal of Biomechanics

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There were minimal changes in EMG signals with walking speed and slope.

Journal article in Journal of Biomechanics:

In collaboration with Gillette Children’s Specialty Healthcare, we evaluated whether muscle synergies change when unimpaired individuals walk at different speeds and slopes.

There were minimal changes in EMG signals with walking speed and slope.Background: The aim of this study was to determine whether changes in synergies relate to changes in gait while walking on a treadmill at multiple speeds and slopes. The hypothesis was that significant changes in movement pattern would not be accompanied by significant changes in synergies, suggesting that synergies are not dependent on the mechanical constraints but are instead neurological in origin.

Methods: Sixteen typically developing children walked on a treadmill for nine combinations (stages) of different speeds and slopes while simultaneously collecting kinematics, kinetics, and surface electromyography (EMG) data. The kinematics for each stride were summarized using a modified version of the Gait Deviation Index that only includes the sagittal plane. The kinetics for each stride were summarized using a modified version of the Gait Deviation Index – Kinetic which includes sagittal plane moments and powers. Within each synergy group, the correlations of the synergies were calculated between the treadmill stages.

Results: While kinematics and kinetics were significantly altered at the highest slope compared to level ground when walking on a treadmill, synergies were similar across stages.

Conclusions: The high correlations between synergies across stages indicate that neuromuscular control strategies do not change as children walk at different speeds and slopes on a treadmill. However, the multiple significant differences in kinematics and kinetics between stages indicate real differences in movement pattern. This supports the theory that synergies are neurological in origin and not simply a response to the biomechanical task constraints.

BR Shuman, MH Schwartz, KM Steele (2017) “Electromyography Data Processing Impacts Muscle Synergies during Gait for Unimpaired Children and Children with Cerebral Palsy.” Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience

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Example data from a representative TD participant. Left: EMG data processed with varying LP filter cutoffs. Center: Synergy weights and activations. Right: Total variance accounted for by n synergies. Total variance accounted for by a given number of synergies was sensitive to LP filter choice and decreased in both TD and CP groups with increasing LP cutoff frequency.

Journal article in Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience:

Filtering parameters impact the results from muscle synergy analyses.

AExample data from a representative TD participant. Left: EMG data processed with varying LP filter cutoffs. Center: Synergy weights and activations. Right: Total variance accounted for by n synergies. Total variance accounted for by a given number of synergies was sensitive to LP filter choice and decreased in both TD and CP groups with increasing LP cutoff frequency.bstract: Muscle synergies calculated from electromyography (EMG) data identify weighted groups of muscles activated together during functional tasks. Research has shown that fewer synergies are required to describe EMG data of individuals with neurologic impairments. When considering potential clinical applications of synergies, understanding how EMG data processing impacts results and clinical interpretation is important. The aim of this study was to evaluate how EMG signal processing impacts synergy outputs during gait. We evaluated the impacts of two common processing steps for synergy analyses: low pass (LP) filtering and unit variance scaling. We evaluated EMG data collected during barefoot walking from five muscles of 113 children with cerebral palsy (CP) and 73 typically-developing (TD) children. We applied LP filters to the EMG data with cutoff frequencies ranging from 4 to 40 Hz (reflecting the range reported in prior synergy research). We also evaluated the impact of normalizing EMG amplitude by unit variance. We found that the total variance accounted for (tVAF) by a given number of synergies was sensitive to LP filter choice and decreased in both TD and CP groups with increasing LP cutoff frequency (e.g., 9.3 percentage points change for one synergy between 4 and 40 Hz). This change in tVAF can alter the number of synergies selected for further analyses. Normalizing tVAF to a z-score (e.g., dynamic motor control index during walking, walk-DMC) reduced sensitivity to LP cutoff. Unit variance scaling caused comparatively small changes in tVAF. Synergy weights and activations were impacted less than tVAF by LP filter choice and unit variance normalization. These results demonstrate that EMG signal processing methods impact outputs of synergy analysis and z-score based measures can assist in reporting and comparing results across studies and clinical centers.

KM Steele, RW Jackson, BR Shuman, SH Collins (2017) “Muscle recruitment and coordination with an ankle exoskeleton.” Journal of Biomechanics

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Synergy structure and activations had minimal changes with increasing exoskeleton torque.

Journal article in Journal of Biomechanics:

How do muscle activations and synergies change when an individual wears an ankle exoskeleton during gait?

Abstract: Exoskeletons have the potential to assist and augment human performance. Understanding how users adapt their movement and neuromuscular control in response to external assistance is important to inform the design of these devices. The aim of this research was to evaluate changes in muscle recruitment and coordination for ten unimpaired individuals walking with an ankle exoskeleton. We evaluated changes in the activity of individual muscles, cocontraction levels, and synergistic patterns of muscle coordination with increasing exoskeleton work and torque. Participants were able to selectively reduce activity of the ankle plantarflexors with increasing exoskeleton assistance. Increasing exoskeleton net work resulted in greater reductions in muscle activity than increasing exoskeleton torque. Patterns of muscle coordination were not restricted or constrained to synergistic patterns observed during unassisted walking. While three synergies could describe nearly 95% of the variance in electromyography data during unassisted walking, these same synergies could describe only 85–90% of the variance in muscle activity while walking with the exoskeleton. Synergies calculated with the exoskeleton demonstrated greater changes in synergy weights with increasing exoskeleton work versus greater changes in synergy activations with increasing exoskeleton torque. These results support the theory that unimpaired individuals do not exclusively use central pattern generators or other low-level building blocks to coordinate muscle activity, especially when learning a new task or adapting to external assistance, and demonstrate the potential for using exoskeletons to modulate muscle recruitment and coordination patterns for rehabilitation or performance.Synergy structure and activations had minimal changes with increasing exoskeleton torque.

Walk-DMC – Kat Steele and Michael Schwartz are featured in GeekWire

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A staff member of a gait lab kneels next to a child to apply additional motion detecting markers at Gillette Children's Specialty Healthcare. Another staff member sits behind a desk, observing the instrumentation on the lab computer. Photo taken by Michael Schwartz.

GeekWire, a national technology news resource, has featured Dr. Steele and Dr. Schwartz‘s Walk-DMC in a special series focused on community issues and innovative solutions to societal challenges. Lisa Stiffler reports on the analysis that is used to create Walk-DMC, an assessment tool that uses routinely collected electromyography (EMG) data to identify which kids are the strongest candidates for surgery — and to help develop alternative treatments for children needing a different solution.

“It’s a very complex problem,” said Steele, who is a co-author of a paper explaining the Walk DMC metric published this month in the journal Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology. “You can have two individuals who are walking visually nearly identically,” she said, “but how they’re controlling that motion can be very different.”

To read the full article, click HERE.

Featured in UWToday: Michael Schwartz and Kat Steele have developed a quantitative assessment of motor control in children with cerebral palsy

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A child walking in the motion analysis lab at Gillette Children's Specialty Healthcare. Photo by Michael Schwartz.

Our lab’s director, Dr. Kat Steele, and Dr. Michael Schwartz, from Gillette Children’s Specialty Healthcare, have developed a quantitative assessment of motor control in children with cerebral palsy called Walk-DMC, which could be used to help determine whether or not patients would benefit from aggressive, invasive surgeries to assist in walking and motion. Jennifer Langston reports on the new technique within UWToday. An exert from the article is posted below, but for the full article, read HERE.

“Only about 50 percent of children have significant improvement in their movement after these highly invasive surgeries,” said Kat Steele, a UW assistant professor of mechanical engineering. “Our motivation has really been to figure out how we can push up these success rates.”