Fall recognition using wearable technologies and machine learning algorithms

Falls are common and dangerous for the elderly or individuals with decreased independence or functional limitations. Fall recognition is extremely important for fallers, healthcare providers, and society. Immediate fall recognition triggers emergency services and potentially decreases individuals time with injury without care. Acute post-fall intervention works to mitigate life threatening fall consequences, decrease fall risk through rehabilitation, and improve quality of life. Extended from our research on real-time fall risk estimation with the functional reach test and Timed Up and Go test built in mStroke, a real-time and automatic mobile health system for post-stroke recovery and rehabilitation, our investigation here is expanded to include fall recognition by taking advantage of wearable technologies and machine learning algorithms. Up to three wearable sensors are employed to acquire raw motion data related to activities of daily living or falls. Feature selection and classification on the basis of machine learning algorithms are explored for fall recognition. The fall recognition performances are presented to justify their accuracy and reliability. Meanwhile, the effects of sensor placement/location and the feature number on the recognition performance are also discussed in this paper.