School of Electrical, Computer and Telecommunications Engineering, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia.
Illawarra Health and Medical Research Institute, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia.
Med Biol Eng Comput. 2019 Feb;57(2):533-542. doi: 10.1007/s11517-018-1901-5. Epub 2018 Sep 26.
A cross-sectional study of postural sway analysis in older non-fallers, once-fallers and multiple-fallers using five common standing tests was conducted. Eighty-six older subjects with an average age of 80.4 years (SD ± 7.9) participated in the study. The angular rotation and velocity of the trunk of the participants in the roll (lateral) and pitch (sagittal) planes were recorded using an inertial sensor mounted on their lower backs. The Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM), Expectation-Maximisation (EM) and the Minimum Message Length (MML) algorithms were applied to the acquired data to obtain an index indicative of the body sway. The standing with feet together and standing with one foot in front, sway index distinguished older fallers from non-fallers with specificity of 75.7% and 77.7%, respectively, and sensitivity of 78.6% and 82.1%, respectively. This compares favourably with the Berg Balance Scales (BBS) with specificity of 70.5% and sensitivity of 75.3%. The results suggest that the proposed method has potential as a protocol to diagnose balance disorder in older people. Graphical abstract.
采用五种常见的站立测试对老年人中无跌倒史者、有跌倒史者和多次跌倒者的姿势摆动分析进行了横断面研究。86 名年龄平均为 80.4 岁（SD±7.9）的老年人参与了这项研究。参与者的躯干在滚动（横向）和俯仰（矢状）平面上的角度旋转和速度使用安装在其下背部的惯性传感器进行记录。高斯混合模型 (GMM)、期望最大化 (EM) 和最小信息长度 (MML) 算法被应用于获得的数据，以获得一个表示身体摆动的指标。双脚并拢站立和单脚在前站立的摆动指标分别以 75.7%和 77.7%的特异性和 78.6%和 82.1%的敏感性将老年人跌倒者与无跌倒者区分开来。这与伯格平衡量表 (BBS) 的特异性 70.5%和敏感性 75.3%相比表现良好。结果表明，该方法具有作为诊断老年人平衡障碍的协议的潜力。
