Citation

Simila H, Mantyjarvi J, Merilahti J, Lindholm M, Ermes M. IEEE J. Biomed. Health Inform. 2014; 18(4): 1114-1121.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)

DOI

10.1109/JBHI.2013.2288940

PMID

24235319

Abstract

The objective of the study was to investigate the validity of 3D-accelerometry-based Berg Balance Scale (BBS) score estimation. In particular, acceleration patterns of BBS tasks and gait were targets of analysis. Accelerations of the lower back were measured during execution of the BBS test and corridor-walking for 54 subjects, consisting of neurological patients, older adults, and healthy young persons. The BBS score was estimated from 1-3 BBS tasks and from gait-related data, separately, through assessment of the similarity of acceleration patterns between subjects. The work also validated both approaches' ability to classify subjects into high- and low-fall-risk groups. The gait-based method yielded the best BBS score estimates and the most accurate BBS-task-based estimates were produced with the stand to sit, reaching, and picking object tasks. The proposed gait-based method can identify subjects with high or low risk of falling with an accuracy of 77.8% and 96.6%, respectively, and the BBS-task-based method with corresponding accuracy of 89.5% and 62.1%.

Language: en