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The identification of gait patterns in cerebral palsy offers a common language for clinicians and contributes to management algorithms. We describe a quantitative classification of sagittal gait patterns based on the plantarflexor–knee extension couple index. This consists of a scatter plot based on ankle and knee scores, and allows objective identification of the sagittal gait pattern.

Sagittal kinematic data from 200 limbs of 100 patients with bilateral spastic cerebral palsy were utilized to validate the algorithm against the assessment of a clinician with expertise in gait pattern identification. A dataset of 776 cerebral palsy patients, 1552 limbs, was used to compare the sagittal gait patterns against k-means statistical clustering. The classification was further explored with respect to the knee kinetics during the middle of stance and physical examination measurements of the gastrocnemius–soleus complex. Two …