Development of a wearable motion capture system to evaluate the knee joint angle during stair-climbing in hemiplegics

Multi-modal gait: A wearable, algorithm and data fusion approach for clinical and free-living assessment

“…Although high accuracy and robust estimations were reported, these approaches are complex and require prior technical information regarding the IMUs to be used. Here, we proposed a less complex and more practical novel approach (A5) to estimate knee flexion angles during stair ambulation and incline walking by novel combination of two different validated algorithms [40,42]. That approach allowed us to achieve a knee joint flexion angle approach that works during stair ambulation and without a need for prior configuration coefficients during orientation estimation.…”

“…Nestares and Callupe developed an algorithm based on orientations of shank and thigh level sensors to evaluate knee joint angle during level walking and stair ascent on HP and SS [42]. The study reported that shank and thigh level sensors' orientation could compute knee flexion angles with high accuracy during level walking and stair ambulation.…”

“…two or more) sensors attachment to e.g., shank and thigh includes: (1) provision of more reliable ground contact characteristics (IC and FC of the foot/feet) within the gait cycle as they are closer to the walking surface compared to waist and (2) enables additional gait capture, e.g. joint kinematics [38] such as knee flexion angles [39][40][41][42]. Yet, modern wearables go beyond IMU technologies by offering additional sensing modalities such as electromyography (EMG) within a single device.…”