Standardized Gait Analysis Using 3D Markerless Motion Capture: A Proposed Procedure and Reliability Investigation in Healthy Young Adults

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors present two main aims in this paper: on the one hand, they intendo to propose a markerless camera-based gait analysis procedure, and on the other hand, they analyze gait data in healthy young adults, recorded with their markerless camera-based setup.

Major:

Unfortunately, the proposed procedure appears to be mainly a description of the authors’ own experimental setup, motivated primarily from a qualitative point of view and continuously compared with OpenCap’s published guidelines. What would normally be expected in a methodological paper is here presented in an overly extended form within the Discussion, yet without any substantial quantitative validation or reliability assessment.

The second part of the paper, concerning data analysis, offers little innovation and remains limited to a motor description of dual-task parameters, without exploring the cognitive component. Indeed, no cognitive assessment was administered, which could have been useful to relate gait features during dual-task performance to specific cognitive test outcomes. Furthermore, no cognitive-related parameters (e.g., error rate, accuracy) were presented or analyzed.

Minor:

Regarding data visualization, violin plots or box plots with associated scatter points would be preferable for clarity and transparency.

Author Response

Please see the attachment 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Major:

For participant selection there is no mention of performing basic cognitive test MOCA and the study simply relied on participant subjective reporting. A cross- over trial with having half participants perform the DT counting tasks without walking and then having then repeat it with walking, while second group started with DT walking and then later performing DT alone would give a more robust idea regarding walking as a factor affecting these cognitive tasks. If someone is simply underperforming with counting then it would be reflected in the walking and non-walking tasks. I would recommend at least listing lack of baseline cognitive capacity as a limitation of this study.

Would describe further what caused error in the capture of 7 trials.

Minor:

Would recommend keeping all gait parameters as the same unit (“m” vs “cm”)

Author Response

Please see the attachment. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Please see attached document

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors made a large effort in improving the manuscript. The core of the paper is now supported by quantitative analysis and the objectives are more clearly descripted.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors have satisfactorily addressed my concerns.