Locomotion analysis and its applications in neurological disorders detection: State-of-art review

Driven by the need of non-invasive diagnosis in clinical practice, behavioral screening and tests have attracted more and more research interests recently. Locomotion analysis, as an important division of behavioral tests, has been widely used in diagnostic decision making, comparative biomechanics, biometric identification and forensics, etc. Plenty of instruments and approaches for locomotion analysis have been developed in both academic and industrial fields to detect diseases clinically, especially neurological disorders. Thus, it is crucial to summarize the methodology and applications of locomotion analysis to help researchers better understand this field. In this review, we focus on describing some recently developed locomotion instruments and their applications in detecting neurological disorders. We also discuss the recent progress of locomotion studies and their pros and cons. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Wien.