Assessing falls in the elderly population using G-STRIDE foot-mounted inertial sensor

Area of Science:

• Gerontology
• Biomedical Engineering
• Clinical Biomechanics

Background:

• Falls are a major health concern for the elderly, leading to significant morbidity and mortality.
• Current fall risk assessments often rely on subjective clinical scales and may lack precision in gait analysis.
• There is a need for objective, user-friendly tools to assess gait and balance in daily clinical practice.

Purpose of the Study:

• To clinically validate the G-STRIDE system, a wearable 6-axis inertial measurement unit (IMU), for assessing gait parameters related to fall risk in older adults.
• To evaluate the correlation between G-STRIDE-derived walking metrics and established clinical markers of fall risk.
• To determine if G-STRIDE can effectively discriminate between elderly individuals with and without a history of falls.

Main Methods:

• A cross-sectional case-control study involving 163 participants (falls and non-falls groups).
• Participants underwent clinical assessments and a 15-minute walking test wearing the G-STRIDE system.
• Gait parameters were calculated from IMU data, and correlation analysis was performed with clinical variables.

Main Results:

• The G-STRIDE system demonstrated good to excellent estimation accuracy for walking speed (ICC = 0.885).
• Walking parameters derived from G-STRIDE statistically discriminated between the falls and non-falls groups.
• Gait speed showed good to excellent correlation with several clinical fall risk indicators.

Conclusions:

• The G-STRIDE system provides a low-cost, flexible solution for objective gait analysis in real-world settings.
• G-STRIDE-derived walking metrics can effectively identify individuals at higher risk of falls.
• Preliminary fall-risk assessment using G-STRIDE parameters improved the identification of fallers compared to the Timed Up and Go test.