A trial of making reference gait data for simple gait evaluation system with wireless inertial sensors

Abstract

Recently, the use of wearable inertial sensors have been widely studied in the field of human movement analysis. Our research group developed a wearable motion measurement system using the wireless inertial sensors for rehabilitation training and daily exercise. However, there are few reference data to evaluate motor function. In this paper, reference data of joint and inclination angles of lower limb and that of gait event timing for gait evaluation were made by measurement with 4 healthy subjects in their twenties. Average values of inclination and joint angles and gait event timings were similar to those seen in literature. These suggest that the averaged data obtained in this paper can be used as reference data. Then, gait data of a healthy subject in his thirties were compared with the reference data. Most of angles and all the gait event timings were considered to be standard of 20's. However, some angles of the healthy subject in his thirties were considered not to be the standard partly. These differences in evaluation were considered to depend on a level of similarity of movement to the reference data. It was expected to evaluate the level of similarity of movement from various parameters.

Evaluation of Validity and Reliability of Inertial Measurement Unit-Based Gait Analysis Systems

“…The differences between the RMSE values of the two systems determined through the kinematic parameters ranged from a minimum of 1.83 to a maximum of 3.98, with a tolerance close to 1%. The comparison results of the two systems indicated that IMU-based systems can replace camera-based systems [12,22,23]. The errors in the joint angles during the gait analysis were within the tolerance range, and these errors could be reduced by replacing the gyroscope, accelerometer, and magnetometer sensors with one integrated sensor.…”

“…In this study, the validity of the gait analysis was evaluated using the root mean square error (RMSE) of the parameters simultaneously obtained through the camera- and IMU-based systems. RMSE is widely used to verify the validity of gait analysis by analyzing the average difference between the parameters [12,22,23]. If the value of the RMSE is small, then the signals are close to each other.…”

“…Consequently, there are issues concerning the validity and reliability of the measurements obtained from these machines [10]. With the aim of developing systems that address the disadvantages outlined above, recent research has focused on gait analysis using inertial measurement units (IMUs) [11,12].…”

A preliminary study on evaluation of circumduction movement during gait with wireless inertial sensors

“…Although there are many researches on measuring movement of motor disabled patients [1][2][3][4], there are few studies trying to make reference data by measuring gait movements of many healthy subjects with inertial sensors in order to compare with patient's gait movement to use in rehabilitation programs. Therefore, in our research group, for the purpose of making reference data including new evaluation parameters, gait movements of healthy subjects were measured with inertial sensors [5].…”