A Machine Learning Framework for Gait Classification Using Inertial Sensors: Application to Elderly, Post-Stroke and Huntington's Disease Patients.

Journal: Sensors (Basel, Switzerland)
Published Date:

Abstract

Machine learning methods have been widely used for gait assessment through the estimation of spatio-temporal parameters. As a further step, the objective of this work is to propose and validate a general probabilistic modeling approach for the classification of different pathological gaits. Specifically, the presented methodology was tested on gait data recorded on two pathological populations (Huntington's disease and post-stroke subjects) and healthy elderly controls using data from inertial measurement units placed at shank and waist. By extracting features from group-specific Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) and signal information in time and frequency domain, a Support Vector Machines classifier (SVM) was designed and validated. The 90.5% of subjects was assigned to the right group after leave-one-subject-out cross validation and majority voting. The long-term goal we point to is the gait assessment in everyday life to early detect gait alterations.

Authors

  • Andrea Mannini
    IRCCS Fondazione Don Carlo Gnocchi onlus, Via di Scandicci 269, Firenze, 50143, Italy. amannini@dongnocchi.it.
  • Diana Trojaniello
    Information Engineering Unit, POLCOMING Department, University of Sassari, Sassari 07100, Italy. dtrojaniello@uniss.it.
  • Andrea Cereatti
    Information Engineering Unit, POLCOMING Department, University of Sassari, Sassari 07100, Italy. acereatti@uniss.it.
  • Angelo M Sabatini
    The BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa 56127, Italy. sabatini@sssup.it.