title: Investigation of fall-risk using a wearable device with accelerometers and rate gyroscopes.
abstract: A clinical tool and an associated test that can assess fall-risk in elderly patients have been designed. The clinical tool was based on a wearable device with accelerometers and rate gyroscopes to identify trunk kinematic parameters. The test was based on a posturography protocol with different constraints and statistical analysis of the kinematic parameters. Statistical clustering based on the Mahalanobis distance was carried out using three groups of 30 subjects (1, age < 65 years; 2, age > or = 65 years and 3, age > or = 65 years and a fall history). The method was statistically validated using three groups of 100 subjects. The test allowed discrimination of elderly subjects with a high fall-risk with high specificity > or = 0.930 and sensitivity > or = 0.939.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Tecnologie e Salute, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Viale Regina Elena 299, 00161 Roma, Italy. dgiansa@iss.it
authors.forename: Daniele
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Giansanti
mesh_terms: D000054:Acceleration; D000058:Accidental Falls; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000465:Algorithms; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D004864:Equipment and Supplies; D006801:Humans; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012306:Risk; D012307:Risk Factors; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity