TY - JOUR PY - 2010// TI - Body sway measurement for fall risk assessment using inexpensive webcams JO - Conference proceedings - IEEE engineering in medicine and biology society A1 - Wang, Fang A1 - Skubic, Marjorie A1 - Abbott, Carmen C. A1 - Keller, James M. SP - 2225 EP - 2229 VL - 2010 IS - N2 - In this paper, we present a method for extracting body sway parameters from a three-dimensional voxel reconstruction, which is built using silhouettes captured from two calibrated web camera views. The results were validated with a Vicon motion capture system. Experiments were conducted in which subjects stand and sway in the anterior-posterior direction and then in the lateral directions with two different frequencies. In addition, experiments were also conducted where subjects walked in a straight path at different speeds. Through the experiment, the Vicon cameras recorded the motion of reflective markers attached to subjects, and our two calibrated cameras captured the images. Good agreement was found with our system compared to the Vicon results, given the limitation of voxel space resolution and frame rate. The development of this technology provides potential capability of measuring body sway in daily living environment for elderly people, and can be used as part of a balance, stability and fall risk assessment tool.

Language: en

LA - en SN - 1557-170X UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/IEMBS.2010.5626100 ID - ref1 ER -