Basic gait analysis based on continuous wave radar.

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Signal Processing
• Human Motion Analysis

Background:

• Gait analysis is crucial for diagnosing and treating various medical conditions.
• Traditional gait analysis methods can be cumbersome and require specialized equipment.
• Non-invasive, remote sensing techniques for gait analysis are highly desirable.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose and validate a novel gait analysis method using continuous wave (CW) radar.
• To investigate the relationship between radar micro-Doppler signatures and human gait parameters.
• To explore the potential of radar-based gait analysis for distinguishing between different demographic groups, such as males and females.

Main Methods:

• Utilizing continuous wave (CW) radar to capture micro-Doppler echoes from walking subjects.
• Applying time-frequency analysis to the radar echoes to generate spectrograms.
• Developing and implementing algorithms for extracting key gait parameters from the time-frequency spectrograms.
• Conducting experiments with over twenty subjects to collect radar gait data.

Main Results:

• Successfully extracted and calculated various gait parameters from the CW radar data.
• Demonstrated significant differences in gait parameters between male and female subjects based on radar-derived features.
• Validated the feasibility of using time-frequency analysis of radar echoes for gait characterization.

Conclusions:

• Continuous wave (CW) radar offers a promising, non-invasive approach for gait analysis.
• The proposed method effectively extracts gait parameters and can identify demographic-specific gait variations.
• Radar-based gait analysis holds potential for future clinical diagnosis and therapeutic monitoring.