Wearable Devices for Gait Analysis in Intelligent Healthcare

 We need this so we can get an objective diagnosis of our gait problems. Then we could map protocols that fix those problems to them and have repeatable recovery options. But no, no one in stroke seems be thinking like that at all. We get crapola guidelines instead, we seem to have no intelligence in the stroke medical world at all.

Wearable Devices for Gait Analysis in Intelligent Healthcare

Xin Liu^1,2,3, Chen Zhao^1,3, Bin Zheng²*, Qinwei Guo⁴*, Xiaoqin Duan^2,5, Aziguli Wulamu^1,3 and Dezheng Zhang^1,3

• ¹School of Computer and Communication Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, China
• ²Surgical Simulation Research Lab, Department of Surgery, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada
• ³Beijing Key Laboratory of Knowledge Engineering for Materials Science, Beijing, China
• ⁴Institute of Sports Medicine, Peking University Third Hospital, Beijing, China
• ⁵Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Jilin University Second Hospital, Changchun, China

In this study, we review the role of wearable devices in tracking our daily locomotion. We discuss types of wearable devices that can be used, methods for gait analyses, and multiple healthcare-related applications aided by artificial intelligence. Impaired walking and locomotion are common resulting from injuries, degenerative pathologies, musculoskeletal disorders, and various neurological damages. Daily tracking and gait analysis are convenient and efficient approaches for monitoring human walking, where concreate and rich data can be obtained for examining our posture control mechanism during body movement and providing enhanced clinical pieces of evidence for diagnoses and treatments. Many sensors in wearable devices can help to record data of walking and running; spatiotemporal and kinematic variables can be further calculated in gait analysis. We report our previous works in gait analysis, discussing applications of wearable devices for detecting foot and ankle lesions, supporting surgeons in early diagnosis, and helping physicians with rehabilitation.

Introduction

Walking is one of the most common activities we perform on daily basis. Normal human walking requires high a level of movement coordination between our extremities and the trunk. Constantly monitoring our walking pattern is a way to examine our health because the central nervous system is involved intensively to control the limb movements and the function of posture control while our body is moving. We believe wearable devices can play an important role in daily surveillance on our walking.

Impaired walking and locomotion are commonly seen worldwide resulting from injuries, degenerative pathologies, musculoskeletal disorders, and neurological damages. In traditional practice, physicians make diagnoses of these injuries base on physical and medical examinations. Complete gait analysis can only be performed in some tertiary hospitals on a small number of patients. Many scientists argued that gait analysis should be applied to all patients with degenerative diseases and those in need of long-term rehabilitation.

Gait analysis is systematic research involving sensor technology, anthropometry, and artificial intelligence. Wearable sensors and devices are widely applied to intelligent healthcare as the fast development in wireless communication, network technology, and micro-electronic technique. Unlike laboratory-based motion trackers, wearable devices are plausible for gait analysis. Technologies such as smartphones, sensors, and sensing fabric et al., are small, low-cost, and available for monitoring individuals’ activities.

Nowadays, wearable devices are increasingly used in biomechanical studies and sports medicine. As the development of the sensor technology, gait analysis is gradually employed in healthcare management including daily health monitoring, clinical diagnosis and rehabilitation assessment in surgery, elder’s fall risk detection et al. Several studies reported that gait analysis facilitated the whole process management of individuals and the decision-making of physicians in diagnosis and treatment.

The main purpose of this study is to review wearable devices for motion-tracking, gait analysis methods, and multiple healthcare-related applications in intelligent healthcare. To achieve the goal, we introduce common wearable motion-tracking devices including smartphones, wearable sensors, and sensing fabric; report our previous works in spatiotemporal gait analysis; discuss the application of gait analysis in daily health monitoring, sickness prevention, early diagnosis, and rehabilitation