Gracey-McMinn Lauren, Loudon David, Chadwell Alix, Curtin Samantha, Ostler Chantel, Granat Malcolm
Centre for Human Movement and Rehabilitation, School of Health and Society, University of Salford, Salford M6 6PU, UK.
PAL Technologies Ltd., Glasgow G4 0TQ, UK.
Sensors (Basel). 2025 Aug 12;25(16):4979. doi: 10.3390/s25164979.
Objective measurement of community participation is essential for evaluating functional recovery and intervention outcomes in clinical populations, yet current methods rely heavily on subjective self-report measures. This study developed and validated a classification model to distinguish between home- and community-based activities using stepping and lying data from activPAL devices. Twenty-four healthy participants wore activPAL 4+ monitors continuously while completing activity diaries over 7 days. A grid search optimisation approach tested threshold combinations for two stepping parameters: straight-line stepping time (SLS) and continuous stepping duration (CSD). The optimal model achieved 93.7% accuracy across 24-h periods using an SLS threshold of 26 s. The model demonstrated high precision with a median difference of just 7 min between the predicted and reported community participation time. Individual variation in model performance highlights the need for validation in diverse clinical cohorts. This represents a methodological advance in objective physical behaviour monitoring, enabling accurate classification of home and community activity from posture data. By identifying not just how much people move but where they move, the model supports more meaningful assessment of functional mobility and community participation. This can enhance clinical decision making, rehabilitation planning, and intervention evaluation. With potential for adoption in clinical pathways and public health policy, this approach addresses a key gap in measuring real-world recovery and independence.
客观测量社区参与度对于评估临床人群的功能恢复和干预效果至关重要,但目前的方法严重依赖主观自我报告测量。本研究开发并验证了一种分类模型,该模型利用activPAL设备的步数和躺卧数据来区分基于家庭和社区的活动。24名健康参与者在连续7天完成活动日记的同时,持续佩戴activPAL 4+监测器。一种网格搜索优化方法测试了两个步数参数的阈值组合:直线步数时间(SLS)和连续步数持续时间(CSD)。使用26秒的SLS阈值,该最优模型在24小时内的准确率达到了93.7%。该模型表现出高精度,预测的和报告的社区参与时间之间的中位数差异仅为7分钟。模型性能的个体差异凸显了在不同临床队列中进行验证的必要性。这代表了客观身体行为监测方面的一项方法学进展,能够根据姿势数据准确分类家庭和社区活动。通过不仅识别人们的运动量,还识别他们的活动地点,该模型支持对功能移动性和社区参与度进行更有意义的评估。这可以加强临床决策、康复计划和干预评估。由于有可能应用于临床路径和公共卫生政策,这种方法弥补了测量现实世界中的恢复和独立性方面的一个关键差距。