SarcoNet: A Pilot Study on Integrating Clinical and Kinematic Features for Sarcopenia Classification

Background and Objectives: Sarcopenia is a progressive loss of skeletal muscle mass and function in elderly adults, posing a significant risk of frailty, falls, and morbidity. The current study designs and evaluates SarcoNet, a novel artificial neural network (ANN)-based classification framework developed in order to classify Sarcopenic from non-Sarcopenic subjects using a comprehensive real-time dataset. Methods: This pilot study involved 30 subjects, who were divided into Sarcopenic and non-Sarcopenic groups based on physician assessment. The collected dataset consists of thirty-one clinical parameters like skeletal muscle mass, which is collected using various equipment such as Body Composition Analyser, along with ten kinetic features which are derived from video-based gait analysis of joint angles obtained during walking on three terrain types such as slope, steps, and parallel path. The performance of the designed ANN-based SarcoNet was benchmarked against the traditional machine learning classifiers utilised including Support Vector Machine (SVM), k-Nearest Neighbours (k-NN), and Random Forest (RF), as well as hard and soft voting ensemble classifiers. Results: SarcoNet achieved the highest overall classification accuracy of about 94%, with a specificity and precision of about 100%, an F1-score of about 92.4%, and an AUC of 0.94, outperforming all other models. The incorporation of lower-limb joint kinetics such as knee flexion, extension, ankle plantarflexion and dorsiflexion significantly enhanced predictive capability of the model and thus reflecting the functional deterioration characteristic of muscles in Sarcopenia. Conclusions: SarcoNet provides a promising AI-driven solution in Sarcopenia diagnosis, especially in low-resource healthcare settings. Future work will focus on improving the dataset, validating the model across diverse populations, and incorporating explainable AI to improve clinical adoption.