An Ear-Worn Sensor for the Detection of Gait Impairment After Abdominal Surgery

Abstract

Surgery to the trunk often results in a change of gait, most pronounced during walking. This change is usually transient, often as a result of wound pain, and returns to normal as the patient recovers. Quantifying and monitoring gait impairment therefore represents a novel means of functional postoperative home recovery follow-up. Until now, this type of assessment could only be made in a gait lab, which is both expensive and labor intensive to administer on a large scale. The objective of this work is to validate the use of an ear-worn activity recognition (e-AR) sensor for quantification of gait impairment after abdominal wall and perianal surgery. The e-AR sensor was used on 2 comparative simulated data sets (N = 32) of truncal impairment to observe walking patterns. The sensor was also used to observe the walking patterns of preoperative and postoperative surgical patients who had undergone abdominal wall (n = 5) and perianal surgery (n = 5). Methods for multiresolution feature extraction, selection, and classification are investigated using the raw ear-sensor data. Results show that the method demonstrates a good separation between impaired and nonimpaired classes for both simulated and real patient data sets. This indicates that the e-AR sensor may be used as a tool for the pervasive assessment of postoperative gait impairment, as part of functional recovery monitoring, in patients at their own homes.

Body Sensor Networks: In the Era of Big Data and Beyond

“…In order to be unobtrusive, sensor nodes of BSN are often embedded into gadgets and accessories, such as a finger-ring [44,45], earpiece [46] and eyeglasses [47], as shown in Fig. 6.…”

“…6. Examples of Wearable Sensors using Narrow-band Communication Technology (a) oxygen saturation and heart rate ring sensor [44], (b) e-AR sensor for detecting gait impairment [46] and (c) a clip-free eyeglasses for measuring heart rate [47].…”

Enabling IoT empowered smart lighting solutions: A communication theoretic perspective

“…Recently, authors in [3] studied detection of gait impairment after abdominal surgery. The detection was performed using a simple ear worn 3-axim micro-electro mechanical-system (MEMS) accelerometer.…”

Balance and knee extensibility evaluation of hemiplegic gait using an inertial body sensor network

“…Some researchers [13,15] used accelerometers and gyroscopes fixed on metal plates to measure human joint flexion-extension angles, but they found that the use of metal plates is cumbersome. L.Atallah and Benny Lo et al [16,17] developed an ear-worn sensor for gait monitoring. Dejnabadi et al [18] developed a method of measuring joint angle using a combination of accelerometers and gyroscopes by placing a pair of virtual sensors on the adjacent segments at the center of rotation.…”