| Summary: | Falls among the elderly population cause detrimental physical, mental, financial problems and, in the worst case, death. The increasing number of people entering the higher risk age-range has increased clinicians’ attention to intervene. Clinical tools, e.g., the Timed Up and Go (TUG) test, have been created for aiding clinicians in fall-risk assessment. Often simple to evaluate, these assessments are subject to a clinician’s judgment. Wearable sensor data with machine learning algorithms were introduced as an alternative to precisely quantify ambulatory kinematics and predict prospective falls. However, they require a long-term evaluation of large samples of subjects’ locomotion and complex feature engineering of sensor kinematics. Therefore, it is critical to build an objective fall-risk detection model that can efficiently measure biometric risk factors with minimal costs. We built and studied a sensor data-driven convolutional neural network model to predict older adults’ fall-risk status with relatively high sensitivity to geriatrician’s expert assessment. The sample in this study is representative of older patients with multiple co-morbidity seen in daily medical practice. Three non-intrusive wearable sensors were used to measure participants’ gait kinematics during the TUG test. This data collection ensured convenient capture of various gait impairment aspects at different body locations.
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