Exploitation of radar Doppler signatures for gait analysis

The purpose of this study was to measure radar signal returns to explore if differences in gait patterns of individuals under certain conditions could be exploited from radar Doppler signatures. Abnormalities in gait associated with some forms of concussion as well as other neurological diseases that manifest in the walking gait could be a future avenue for analysis with this methodology. Access to clinically diagnosed concussed individuals was not available during this proof-of-concept study. Instead, based on research that demonstrated a blood alcohol content (BAC) of 0.05% was comparable to concussion impairment, BAC visual impairment goggles were employed. Healthy individuals with and without visually simulated impairment conditions were asked to complete only motor skill tasks and then complete motor skill and cognitive skill tasks simultaneously. These results were analyzed using information theoretic (IT) techniques. IT algorithms were chosen because of their potential to identify similarities and differences without the requirement of any a priori knowledge. Using statistical processing techniques, initial results show that gait anomalies could be quantitatively distinguished between the described conditions.