A dynamic evidential network for fall detection

This study is part of the development of a remote home healthcare monitoring application designed to detect distress situations through several types of sensors. The multisensor fusion can provide more accurate and reliable information compared to information provided by each sensor separately. Furthermore, data from multiple heterogeneous sensors present in the remote home healthcare monitoring systems have different degrees of imperfection and trust. Among the multisensor fusion methods, Dempster-Shafer theory (DST) is currently considered the most appropriate for representing and processing the imperfect information. Based on a graphical representation of the DST called evidential networks, a structure of heterogeneous data fusion from multiple sensors for fall detection has been proposed. The evidential networks, implemented on our remote medical monitoring platform, are also proposed in this paper to maximize the performance of automatic fall detection and thus make the system more reliable. However, the presence of noise, the variability of recorded signals by the sensors, and the failing or unreliable sensors may thwart the evidential networks performance. In addition, the sensors signals nonstationary nature may degrade the experimental conditions. To compensate the nonstationary effect, the time evolution is considered by introducing the dynamic evidential network which was evaluated by the simulated fall scenarios corresponding to various use cases.