Temporal Parameters Estimation for Wheelchair Propulsion Using Wearable Sensors

Due to lower limb paralysis, individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI) rely on their upper limbs for mobility. The prevalence of upper extremity pain and injury is high among this population. We evaluated the performance of three triaxis accelerometers placed on the upper arm, wrist, and under the wheelchair, to estimate temporal parameters of wheelchair propulsion. Twenty-six participants with SCI were asked to push their wheelchair equipped with a SMARTWheel. The estimated stroke number was compared with the criterion from video observations and the estimated push frequency was compared with the criterion from the SMARTWheel. Mean absolute errors (MAE) and mean absolute percentage of error (MAPE) were calculated. Intraclass correlation coefficients and Bland-Altman plots were used to assess the agreement. Results showed reasonable accuracies especially using the accelerometer placed on the upper arm where the MAPE was 8.0% for stroke number and 12.9% for push frequency. The ICC was 0.994 for stroke number and 0.916 for push frequency. The wrist and seat accelerometer showed lower accuracy with a MAPE for the stroke number of 10.8% and 13.4% and ICC of 0.990 and 0.984, respectively. Results suggested that accelerometers could be an option for monitoring temporal parameters of wheelchair propulsion.