Citation

Misu S, Asai T, Ono R, Sawa R, Tsutsumimoto K, Ando H, Doi T. Gait Posture 2017; 57: 295-298.

Affiliation

Department of Preventive Gerontology, Center for Gerontology and Social Science, National Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology, Obu, Japan.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.gaitpost.2017.06.022

PMID

28686998

Abstract

The heel is likely a suitable location to which inertial sensors are attached for the detection of gait events. However, there are few studies to detect gait events and determine temporal gait parameters using sensors attached to the heels. We developed two methods to determine temporal gait parameters: detecting heel-contact using acceleration and detecting toe-off using angular velocity data (acceleration-angular velocity method; A-V method), and detecting both heel-contact and toe-off using angular velocity data (angular velocity-angular velocity method; V-V method). The aim of this study was to examine the concurrent validity of the A-V and V-V methods against the standard method, and to compare their accuracy. Temporal gait parameters were measured in 10 younger and 10 older adults. The intra-class correlation coefficients were excellent in both methods: compared with the standard method (0.80 to 1.00). The root mean square errors of stance and swing time in the A-V method were smaller than the V-V method in older adults, although there were no significant discrepancies in the other comparisons. Our study suggests that inertial sensors attached to the heels, using the A-V method in particular, provide a valid measurement of temporal gait parameters.

Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Language: en

Keywords

Acceleration; Angular velocity; Gait; Older adults; Root mean square error; Validity