A Systematic Review of Wearable Sensors for Monitoring Physical Activity

Abstract

This article reviews the use of wearable sensors for the monitoring of physical activity (PA) for different purposes, including assessment of gait and balance, prevention and/or detection of falls, recognition of various PAs, conduction and assessment of rehabilitation exercises and monitoring of neurological disease progression. The article provides in-depth information on the retrieved articles and discusses study shortcomings related to demographic factors, i.e., age, gender, healthy participants vs patients, and study conditions. It is well known that motion patterns change with age and the onset of illnesses, and that the risk of falling increases with age. Yet, studies including older persons are rare. Gender distribution was not even provided in several studies, and others included only, or a majority of, men. Another shortcoming is that none of the studies were conducted in real-life conditions. Hence, there is still important work to be done in order to increase the usefulness of wearable sensors in these areas. The article highlights flaws in how studies based on previously collected datasets report on study samples and the data collected, which makes the validity and generalizability of those studies low. Exceptions exist, such as the promising recently reported open dataset FallAllD, wherein a longitudinal study with older adults is ongoing.

Accuracy of gait and posture classification using movement sensors in individuals with mobility impairment after stroke

“…Secondly, it enables the extraction of walking periods for qualitative spatiotemporal gait analysis. The distinction between walking and non-walking is one of the main contributors to estimating energy expenditure, widely considered a benchmark outcome for monitoring physical activities ( Kristoffersson and Lindén, 2020 ; Kristoffersson and Lindén, 2022 ; Boukhennoufa et al, 2022 ).…”

Monitoring Neurochemistry in Traumatic Brain Injury Patients Using Microdialysis Integrated with Biosensors: A Review

“…Ever since Clark and Lyons introduced a biosensor to monitor blood gas levels in 1962 [ 59 ], recent advances have facilitated alternative detection modalities. Since then, various types of biosensors for specific detection of analytes [ 60 , 61 , 62 ] have been developed; hence, this is now a multidisciplinary area bridging fundamental science (chemistry, physics, and biology) and clinical practice. An early example of a biosensor integrated with microdialysis for diagnostics was reported by Roda and colleagues in 1991 to monitor extracellular lactate in a rat brain [ 63 ].…”

Affinity‐Based Wearable Electrochemical Biosensors: Natural versus Biomimetic Receptors

“…During the last two years, several aspects of wearable sensing developments have been reviewed showing the high interest this field rises. The review articles include advances in wearable technology for remote healthcare monitoring, [3,4] drug monitoring, [5] glucose monitoring in real time, [6] physical activity monitorization, [7] deep tissue sensing, [8] wound infection detection, [9] bacterial infections in wounds, [10] detection of organic metabolites and drugs in sweat, [11] the use of electronic textiles, [12] paper-based devices, [13] contact lenses, [14] the use of electrochemically active materials, [15] Ti3 C2Tx MXene as electrodes' modifier, [16] Prussian Blue (PB) as electrochemical sensing material, [17] nanomaterials, [18] graphene-based materials, [19] or a general review on contributions in North America to this field. [20] In this article, we survey the latest affinity-based wearable electrochemical biosensors, using both natural and biomimetic receptors from a different point of view that in previously reported reviews which were focused either on the use of soft and flexible materials in affinity sensors and their evolution from conventional lateral-flow test strips to wearable/implantable devices [21] or early development of affinity assays and advances in the past decade, including a section on microchip, lab-on-a-chip, paper, and wearable sensors.…”