5th International ICST Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare

Research Article

Feasibility Study on iPhone Accelerometer for Gait Detection

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  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.4108/icst.pervasivehealth.2011.245995,
        author={Herman Chan and Huiru Zheng and Haiying Wang and Rachel Gawley and Mingjing Yang and Roy Sterritt},
        title={Feasibility Study on iPhone Accelerometer for Gait Detection},
        proceedings={5th International ICST Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare},
        publisher={IEEE},
        proceedings_a={PERVASIVEHEALTH},
        year={2012},
        month={4},
        keywords={Gait Detection Gait Events Gait Analysis Gait Features iPhone Accelerometer Smart insoles Health Informatics},
        doi={10.4108/icst.pervasivehealth.2011.245995}
    }
    
  • Herman Chan
    Huiru Zheng
    Haiying Wang
    Rachel Gawley
    Mingjing Yang
    Roy Sterritt
    Year: 2012
    Feasibility Study on iPhone Accelerometer for Gait Detection
    PERVASIVEHEALTH
    ICST
    DOI: 10.4108/icst.pervasivehealth.2011.245995
Herman Chan1,*, Huiru Zheng1, Haiying Wang1, Rachel Gawley1, Mingjing Yang1, Roy Sterritt1
  • 1: University of Ulster
*Contact email: chan-h@email.ulster.ac.uk

Abstract

Falls amongst the elderly is becoming a major problem with over 50% of elderly hospitalizations due to injury from fall related accidents. Healthcare expenses are dramatically rising due to growing elderly population. Many current technologies for gait analysis are laboratory-based and can incur substantial costs for the healthcare sector for treatment of falls. However utilization of alternative commercially available technologies can potentially reduce costs. Accelerometers are one such option, being ambulatory motion sensors for the detection of orientation and movement. Smart mobile devices are considered as non-invasive and increasingly contain accelerometers for detecting device orientation. This study looks at the capabilities of the accelerometer within a smart mobile device, namely the iPhone, for identification of gait events from walking along a flat surface. The results proves that it is possible to extract features from the accelerometer of an iPhone such as step detection, stride time and cadence.