Feature extraction and selection for objective gait analysis and fall risk assessment by accelerometry.

Background: Falls in the elderly is nowadays a major concern because of their consequences on elderly general health and moral states. Moreover, the aging of the population and the increasing life expectancy make the prediction of falls more and more important. The analysis presented in this article...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Published in:BioMedical Engineering OnLine Vol. 10; no. 1; pp. 1 - 2
Main Authors: Caby, Benoit, Kieffer, Suzanne, de Saint Hubert, Marie, Cremer, Gerald, Macq, Benoit
Format: research Journal Article
Published: BioMed Central 2011
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
fields @attributes:
  recordID: 1
pdfLink:
plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ccm&AN=105000194&site=ehost-live
header:
  @attributes:
    shortDbName: ccm
    uiTerm: 105000194
    longDbName: CINAHL Complete
    uiTag: AN
  controlInfo:
    bkinfo:
    dissinfo:
    jinfo:
      jid:
        1475925X
        1CGX
      jtl: BioMedical Engineering OnLine
      issn: 1475925X
      maglogo: N
    pubinfo:
      dt: 2011
      vid: 10
      iid: 1
      pid: 24147
      pub: BioMed Central
    artinfo:
      ui:
        105000194
        NLM21244718
        2010922811
        10.1186/1475-925X-10-1
        NLM21244718
        PMC3022766
        105000194
      ppf: 1
      ppct: 1
      formats:
      tig:
        atl: Feature extraction and selection for objective gait analysis and fall risk assessment by accelerometry.
      aug:
        au:
          Caby, Benoit
          Kieffer, Suzanne
          de Saint Hubert, Marie
          Cremer, Gerald
          Macq, Benoit
        affil: Telecommunications and teledetection lab, Université Catholique de Louvain, Place du levant,Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. benoit.caby@uclouvain.be.
      sug:
        subj:
          Accidental Falls
          Exercise Test Methods
          Gait
          Motion
          Accelerometry
          Aged
          Aged, 80 and Over
          Algorithms
          Female
          Human
          Male
          Risk Assessment
          Risk Factors
          Aged: 65+ years
          Aged, 80 & over
          Female
          Male
      ab: Background: Falls in the elderly is nowadays a major concern because of their consequences on elderly general health and moral states. Moreover, the aging of the population and the increasing life expectancy make the prediction of falls more and more important. The analysis presented in this article makes a first step in this direction providing a way to analyze gait and classify hospitalized elderly fallers and non-faller. This tool, based on an accelerometer network and signal processing, gives objective informations about the gait and does not need any special gait laboratory as optical analysis do. The tool is also simple to use by a non expert and can therefore be widely used on a large set of patients.Method: A population of 20 hospitalized elderlies was asked to execute several classical clinical tests evaluating their risk of falling. They were also asked if they experienced any fall in the last 12 months. The accelerations of the limbs were recorded during the clinical tests with an accelerometer network distributed on the body. A total of 67 features were extracted from the accelerometric signal recorded during a simple 25 m walking test at comfort speed. A feature selection algorithm was used to select those able to classify subjects at risk and not at risk for several classification algorithms types.Results: The results showed that several classification algorithms were able to discriminate people from the two groups of interest: fallers and non-fallers hospitalized elderlies. The classification performances of the used algorithms were compared. Moreover a subset of the 67 features was considered to be significantly different between the two groups using a t-test.Conclusions: This study gives a method to classify a population of hospitalized elderlies in two groups: at risk of falling or not at risk based on accelerometric data. This is a first step to design a risk of falling assessment system that could be used to provide the right treatment as soon as possible before the fall and its consequences. This tool could also be used to evaluate the risk several times during the revalidation procedure.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype:
        research
        Journal Article
      ougenre: Article
    language: English
    refInfo:
    holdings:
      @attributes:
        islocal: N