Cited by 28Context-Aware Activity Recognition SystemsBalance, Gait, and Falls PreventionHuman Pose and Action Recognition

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 21 of the 21 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Enhancing elderly care: Efficient and reliable real-time fall detection algorithm

Open access
Wang, Yue, Deng, Tiantai·2024·DIGITAL HEALTH

Abstract

Background and Objective: Falls pose a significant risk to public health, especially for the elderly population, and could potentially result in severe injuries or even death. A reliable fall detection system is urgently needed to recognise and promptly alert to falls effectively. A vision-based fall detection system has the advantage of being non-invasive and affordable compared with another popular approach using wearable sensors. Nevertheless, the present challenge lies in the algorithm's limited on-device operating speed due to extremely high computational demands, and the high computational demands are usually essential to improve the performance for the complex scene. Therefore, it is crucial to address the above challenge in computational power and complex scenes. Methods: This article presents the implementation of a real-time fall detection algorithm with low computational costs using a single webcam. The suggested method optimises precision and efficiency by synthesising the strengths of background subtraction and the human pose estimation model BlazePose. The biomechanical features, derived from body key points identified by BlazePose, are utilised in a random forest model for classifying fall events. Results: The proposed algorithm achieves 89.99% accuracy and 29.7 FPS with a laptop CPU on the UR Fall Detection dataset and the Le2i Fall Detection dataset. The algorithm shows great generalisation and robustness in different scenarios. Conclusion: Due to the low computational power of the system, the findings also suggest the potential for implementing the system in small-scale medical monitoring equipment, which maximises its practical value in digital health.

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Crossref · 10.1177/20552076241233690

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Figures

Figure 1. Schematic diagram of the proposed fall detection algorithm.
Figure 1. Schematic diagram of the proposed fall detection algorithm.CC BY · PubMed Central
Figure 2. Comprehensive flowchart of the completed vision-based fall detection algorithm. Blue blocks indicate the input and output module, green blocks depict the flow of the human detector, red blocks explain the origin of the features, and yellow blocks represent the classifier component.
Figure 2. Comprehensive flowchart of the completed vision-based fall detection algorithm. Blue blocks indicate the input and output module, green blocks depict the flow of the human detector, red blocks explain the origin of the features, and yellow blocks represent the classifier component.CC BY · PubMed Central
Figure 3. Block diagram of the suggested human detector.
Figure 3. Block diagram of the suggested human detector.CC BY · PubMed Central
Figure 4. Demonstration of the entire steps in the human detection system: (A) original input frame, (B) background subtraction, (C) Otsu’s thresholding, (D) morphological processing, (E) contouring, and (F) BlazePose's human detection.
Figure 4. Demonstration of the entire steps in the human detection system: (A) original input frame, (B) background subtraction, (C) Otsu’s thresholding, (D) morphological processing, (E) contouring, and (F) BlazePose's human detection.CC BY · PubMed Central
Figure 5. BlazePose's proposed body key point structure.
Figure 5. BlazePose's proposed body key point structure.CC BY · PubMed Central
Figure 6. Decision-making flow of the proposed dual-stage cascading random forest classifier.
Figure 6. Decision-making flow of the proposed dual-stage cascading random forest classifier.CC BY · PubMed Central
Figure 7. Main scenarios in the dataset: (a) bedroom, (b) office room, (c) living room and (d) coffee room.
Figure 7. Main scenarios in the dataset: (a) bedroom, (b) office room, (c) living room and (d) coffee room.CC BY · PubMed Central
Figure 8. Examples of errors caused by the partial bodies in the frame.
Figure 8. Examples of errors caused by the partial bodies in the frame.CC BY · PubMed Central

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Research works printed but not linked: 1

  1. Bazarevsky V, 2020, BlazePose: on-device real-time body pose tracking

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Metadata

Authors
Wang, Y., & Deng, T.
Affiliations
University of Sheffield (GB)
Corresponding author
Deng, Tiantai
Venue
DIGITAL HEALTH
Published
2024-01
Volume
10
Pages
20552076241233690-20552076241233690
ISSN
2055-2076 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W4391975041
Cited by
28
References
21
Citations by year
2026: 8 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 5
FWCI
3.91
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Digital Health (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • White Rose Research Online (University of Leeds, The University of Sheffield, University of York) (acceptedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
Funders
University of Sheffield
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition › Context-Aware Activity Recognition Systems
  • Health Sciences › Health Professions › Physical Therapy, Sports Therapy and Rehabilitation › Balance, Gait, and Falls Prevention
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition › Human Pose and Action Recognition
Keywords
fall detection, elderly care, real-time fall detection, background subtraction, human pose estimation, BlazePose, biomechanical features, random forest classification, low computational cost, webcam-based monitoring

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