Smart Hallway for gait assessment

Problem identification Most people that can benefit from rehabilitation have walking problems. To be able to improve gait and walking, improve functioning of a person and decrease walking limitations, we first have to measure and assess them to quantify the problem. Methods used at the moment have several limitations. An ideal solution for gait measurement and assessment in daily clinical practice would use unobtrusive equipment, with no patient preparation requirements that take time and may influence how they move, and automated analysis that provides a one-page report to a clinician, or at least warns a clinician that there might be some problem with the person’s gait and walking that might increase risk of falls, indicate depression or some other problems. The main objectives of the proposal can be divided into technical and clinical ones. Technical objectives are towards the development of software for the assessment of specific clinical features that correlate with clinical status of the patient. The goal is to use off-the-shelves markerless and contactless technologies and automatically digitize the person’s movements as they walk through an institutional hallway. Recently developed multi-camera-based technologies can merge 2D video into 3D. With an appropriate software one can acquire data, perform the kinematic calculations and generate a report, all with minimal or no human intervention (i.e., the system is not a drain on staff time and does not require specialized staff for data collection and interpretation). The clinical objectives of the proposed project are to examine suitability of data and processed reports acquired from the Smart Hallway system for clinical settings in terms of user acceptability and accuracy for use in clinical practice. Specific research questions are: - What is the influence of different walking conditions (normal cloths vs. tight clothes, barefoot vs. shoes) and individuals’ mood on accuracy of measured data. This phase will involve able-bodied participants. - Can pathological gait or walking disorders of the patients/other participants be identified from the system output? - Can we distinguish between different walking disorders and pathological gait patterns? - Can we detect changes related to health condition and functioning? - Can we predict falling risk? - Can we correctly classify signs of depression? - Can we predict 6-minute walk test results? Methods: In the work package 1 we will Design and set up the Smart Hallway. In work package 2 will do clinical assessment on able-bodied individuals and up to 100 patients visited our outpatient clinic for prosthetics and orthotics. It includes also an application to the National Medical Ethics Committee of the Republic of Slovenia - will be submitted at the end of month 1 of the project. In work package 3 we will develop prediction models and in work package 4 will evaluate them in clinical practice. Work package 5 is project management and dissemination of the results. Expected results: If we are able to solve and predict at least some of the in objectives mentioned problems, we could use these measurements to warn clinicians about problems and to help them make evidence-based clinical decisions. The main idea is to have the system installed in hallways of primary health centres, nursing homes and hospitals, and to perform unobtrusive measurements of gait of the patients/patients, thereby removing the obstacles for use of quantitative motion analysis for clinical decision-making.