Application of gait analysis for hemiplegic patients using six-axis wearable inertia sensors

Gait analysis is considered as an important process which has been wildly adopted in many clinical applications to identify and quantify the lower body functioning impairment of hemiplegic patients. On contrary to the traditional measures which were based on manual observation, numerous researches in recent years have been carried out on utilizing modern assistive devices to analyze gait pattern and produce objective results. In this paper, a novel hemiplegic gait analysis approach based on 6-axis inertial measurement is proposed. The patients' gait data are collected using a set of wearable wireless inertial sensor network and processed to extract gait parameters including step length, hip and knee joint angle. By comparing the sample features between healthy and hemiplegic participants, it is demonstrated that the abnormalities in gait pattern such as irregularity and asymmetry can be found and quantified. This provides clinicians an effective tool to analysis hemiplegic patient's impairment level and recovery progress objectively.