Toward a low-cost gait analysis system for clinical and free-living assessment

Cassim Ladha, Silvia Del Din, Kianoush Nazarpour, Aodhan Hickey, Rosie Morris, Michael Catt, Lynn Rochester, Alan Godfrey
2016 2016 38th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC)  
Gait is an important clinical assessment tool since changes in gait may reflect changes in general health. Measurement of gait is a complex process which has been restricted to bespoke clinical facilities until recently. The use of inexpensive wearable technologies is an attractive alternative and offers the potential to assess gait in any environment. In this paper we present the development of a low cost analysis gait system built using entirely open source components. The system is used to
more » ... pture spatio-temporal gait characteristics derived from an existing conceptual model, sensitive to ageing and neurodegenerative pathology (e.g. Parkinson's disease). We demonstrate the system is suitable for use in a clinical unit and will lead to pragmatic use in a free-living (home) environment. The system consists of a wearable (tri-axial accelerometer and gyroscope) with a Raspberry Pi module for data storage and analysis. This forms ongoing work to develop gait as a low cost diagnostic in modern healthcare.
doi:10.1109/embc.2016.7591086 pmid:28268692 dblp:conf/embc/LadhaDNHMCRG16 fatcat:bduahnf64nb3dmakfovddcvn6i