Mobility Lab to Assess Balance and Gait with Synchronized Body-worn Sensors

Abstract

Need for Better Balance and Gait Assessments in RehabilitationReliable, sensitive, and clinically meaningful measures of balance and gait are critical for clinical assessment, as well as for studies of rehabilitation intervention, of patients with neurological disorders such as Parkinson's disease (PD), multiple sclerosis, stroke, and other conditions such as frailty and orthopedic disorders that lead to high fall risk [1].In these patients, restoration of function may require a prolonged course of therapy that can be difficult to design because progress based on small improvements are difficult to clinically measure.Technology that quantifies balance and gait more sensitively and objectively than current clinical examinations could be very useful for rehabilitation.However, functional capacity must be assessed in rehabilitation at various points in time so that the nature of the intervention (type, intensity, duration, frequency) can be re-evaluated periodically and modified as needed [2].Moreover, rehabilitative care is delivered at various settings across the spectrum of an individual's care; including rehabilitation units, skilled nursing facilities, outpatient clinics, and the patient's home.If technology is going to be used at multiple settings, such technology must be portable, low cost, easy to use, and lightweight.Understanding the response to therapeutic interventions also requires feedback that enables the therapist to make better decisions to select the most effective therapies.Recently, body-worn inertial sensors have been proposed as a portable, low-cost alternative to gait laboratories or dynamic posturography for measurements of gait and balance [18][19][20][21][22][23].Inertial measures of gait and balance have been shown to be sensitive to mild mobility problems in patients with neuropathy, Parkinson's disease, and multiple sclerosis [24][25][26][27].These results suggest that such measures may provide a sensitive means of measuring subtle mobility deficits in clinical settings.Despite the potential advantages of these systems in clinical practice, until recently they have not provided the necessary