Figure 4

Effects of significant angular changes at individual joints on the leading toe-obstacle clearance in the sagittal plane. (A) Postural and end-point position differences between the DMD group (black stick figure) and the Control group (grey stick figure) when crossing an obstacle of 20% leg length. For the DMD group, while increased stance-limb ankle plantarflexion (B) and decreased stance-limb hip flexion (C) tended to increase the toe-obstacle clearance and increased pelvic anterior tilt (D), decreased swing-limb hip flexion (E) and increased swing-limb ankle plantarflexion (F) had the opposite effect, resulting in the observed toe-obstacle clearance similar to that of the control group. In the stick figures, line segments with open circles at the joints are farther away from the viewer, while solid circles are closer to the viewer. With the stance-foot immobilized on the ground, the sub-figures were obtained by rotating the distal part of the pelvis-leg apparatus at one joint at a time while keeping the other joints immobilized according to the significant angular changes reported in Table 3.