Citation

Immonen M, Simila H. Conf. Proc. IEEE Eng. Med. Biol. Soc. 2018; 2018: 2076-2079.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers))

DOI

10.1109/EMBC.2018.8512713

PMID

30440811

Abstract

Falls are an unfortunate problem for older adults, their relatives and societies. Continuous gait monitoring for fall risk assessment during daily lives would allow early interventions to prevent injurious falls. Continuous gait monitoring is possible using technological solutions such as inertial sensors; for example accelerometers. Current solutions require attaching the sensor to a certain location on the body and many of them to the lower back, which is not convenient for the user. The objective of this study was to find out whether gait variables calculated from the acceleration signal measured during walk from two different locations on waist area differ from each other. Forty two older adult subjects were measured during walk test with a triaxial acceleration sensor worn on an elastic belt at the lower back and frontal hip area. Most of the analyzed gait features from the two locations have a strong correlation, indicating that these features are not sensitive to sensor location around waist level. A subsequent study is needed to confirm other locations for the sensors to allow analyzing gait during everyday lives.

Language: en