Assessing postural stability via the correlation patterns of vertical ground reaction force components

Abstract

BackgroundMany methods have been proposed to assess the stability of human postural balance by using a force plate. While most of these approaches characterize postural stability by extracting features from the trajectory of the center of pressure (COP), this work develops stability measures derived from components of the ground reaction force (GRF).MethodsIn comparison with previous GRF-based approaches that extract stability features from the GRF resultant force, this study proposes three feature sets derived from the correlation patterns among the vertical GRF (VGRF) components. The first and second feature sets quantitatively assess the strength and changing speed of the correlation patterns, respectively. The third feature set is used to quantify the stabilizing effect of the GRF coordination patterns on the COP.ResultsIn addition to experimentally demonstrating the reliability of the proposed features, the efficacy of the proposed features has also been tested by using them to classify two age groups (18–24 and 65–73 years) in quiet standing. The experimental results show that the proposed features are considerably more sensitive to aging than one of the most effective conventional COP features and two recently proposed COM features.ConclusionsBy extracting information from the correlation patterns of the VGRF components, this study proposes three sets of features to assess human postural stability during quiet standing. As demonstrated by the experimental results, the proposed features are not only robust to inter-trial variability but also more accurate than the tested COP and COM features in classifying the older and younger age groups. An additional advantage of the proposed approach is that it reduces the force sensing requirement from 3D to 1D, substantially reducing the cost of the force plate measurement system.

Analysis of Vertical Micro Acceleration While Standing Reveals Age-Related Changes

“…On the other hand, vertical fluctuation is much smaller than horizontal fluctuation; thus, there is generally little interest in such variation characteristics [ 15 ]. However, it has been reported that the vertical ground reaction force (Fz) parameter allows the collection of data at a lower cost, because it only collects the weight load fluctuation of the individual; additionally, it is more robust against fluctuations between trials [ 16 ]. If an analysis method using only vertical acceleration can be proposed for balance control due to aging, clinical evaluation using a simpler and lower-cost device will be possible.…”

Static balance ability of persons with visual impairment on firm and foam surfaces

“…It has been indicated that postural balance is destabilized when the COM and Centre of Pressure (COP) are at different locations (Shumway-Cook, & Woollacott, 2007;Hong, Guo, Song, Nagurka, Sung, & Yen, 2016). Also, the dominance of footedness was determined based of mobilizing action of kicking a football.…”

Characterizing Human Postural Stability by Using Features Extracted From the Correlation Structure of Ground Reaction Force Components

“…In addition, COP features have also been used to assess the impacts of special events such as pregnancy, [23], [24]. However, despite the widespread use of the COP in assessing postural stability, the FP-GRF signals associated with the COP have rarely been studied [26].…”