A public data set of human balance evaluations

Abstract

The goal of this study was to create a public data set with results of qualitative and quantitative evaluations related to human balance. Subject’s balance was evaluated by posturography using a force platform and by the Mini Balance Evaluation Systems Tests. In the posturography test, we evaluated subjects standing still for 60 s in four different conditions where vision and the standing surface were manipulated: on a rigid surface with eyes open; on a rigid surface with eyes closed; on an unstable surface with eyes open; on an unstable surface with eyes closed. Each condition was performed three times and the order of the conditions was randomized. In addition, the following tests were employed in order to better characterize each subject: Short Falls Efficacy Scale International; International Physical Activity Questionnaire Short Version; and Trail Making Test. The subjects were also interviewed to collect information about their socio-cultural, demographic, and health characteristics. The data set comprises signals from the force platform (raw data for the force, moments of forces, and centers of pressure) of 163 subjects plus one file with information about the subjects and balance conditions and the results of the other evaluations. All the data is available at PhysioNet and at Figshare.

A public dataset of running biomechanics and the effects of running speed on lower extremity kinematics and kinetics

“…Biomechanical datasets have begun to be accessible in public repositories recently (see Moore, Hnat & Van den Bogert, 2015; Santos & Duarte, 2016, and the references therein). However, these datasets primarily consist of walking and posture data.…”

Selection of Entropy-Measure Parameters for Force Plate-Based Human Balance Evaluation

“…A public data set of human balance evaluations was used in this study [16]. This dataset contains posturography data for 163 subjects, recorded while the subjects were standing still for 60 seconds in four different conditions: with eyes open on a firm surface, with eyes open on a foam mat, with eyes closed on a firm surface, and with eyes closed on a foam mat.…”

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“…In this article, we illustrated how this data can be accessed and explored; a companion Jupyter Notebook (available at https://github.com/demotu/datasets) presents the programming code to generate such analyses and other examples. The preliminary exploration of the data performed so far suggests that these subjects presented similar basic characteristics to the characteristics presented in different studies about human balance that employed similar methods (Freitas et al 2005;Santos & Duarte 2016;Visser et al 2008;Winter 1995).…”

“…We previously created a public data set (Santos & Duarte 2016) with the results of qualitative and quantitative evaluations related to human balance with the same testing conditions employed here. These are the only two data sets related to human balance of which we are aware that are available in the literature.…”

“…However, the exact nature of the control mechanisms that allow humans to maintain their balance and the extent of the information that can be extracted from a person's COG and COP, among other issues, are not settled and are still under intense investigation. With the intent of contributing to this investigation, we recently published an article in which we described a public data set with the results of qualitative and quantitative evaluations related to the balance of 163 human subjects (Santos & Duarte 2016). The only quantitative measurement of the postural sway we provided in that data set was COP displacement, which was measured with a single force platform.…”