An improved representation of gait curves ensemble average

The mean cycle plus/minus one or two standard deviations is widely used to represent the gait patterns of specific populations, as in the case of normality data. While this approach is correct when a wide sample is available, it might produce unreliable patterns when the sample size is reduced, the data distribution is not Gaussian and in presence of outliers. Moreover, it forces the band around the mean value to be symmetric, which can be not realistic when studying populations of patients. An alternative representation is proposed in this work, based on the use of the median curve with gray-scaled percentile bands.