A step towards smart health: A pelvic wearable device for gait health quantification

Neurological disorders such as Stroke majorly affect one's walking ability thereby leading to issues while performing activities of daily living. Such mobility issues are often manifested by circumduction in one's gait with anomalous pelvic obliquity post-stroke. These deficits are mostly visually estimated by therapist's expert eyes while suggesting rehabilitation exercises. However, this observation-based estimation technique is often (i) subjective, (ii) labour-intensive and (iii) costly. Thus, quantitative estimation of one's pelvic obliquity is important as it can be considered as one of the indices of healthy gait. Although the existing technology-assisted stereo-photogrammetric systems provide accurate measurements, they are either very costly and/or less user-friendly in the clinical settings. Keeping these factors in mind, our present work aimed at developing a cost-effective, user-friendly Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU)-based tool for quantifying one's pelvic motion during over-ground walking. To confirm its applicability as a reliable low-cost sensor, we employed (i) software-based, (ii) pendulum-based and (iii) foot switch-based calibration procedures. The calibrated IMU was then employed in walking experiments with 15 healthy participants having the IMU attached to their Sacrum. Preliminary results on the gait indices such as, pelvic obliquity, walk speed and turn derived from the calibrated IMU data during the walking experiments are promising.