Wearable static posturography solution using a novel pressure sensor sole

Static posturography is an important measurement in the diagnostic workup for patients with postural instability. New wearable sensor technologies enable researchers to use in-shoe pressure soles in the home environment and outdoor applications. In this study a newly developed in-shoe pressure sole was used for calculating the sway path and 95 % confidence ellipse area as the standard parameters of typical static posturography. Insole posturography was validated on 24 subjects by a state of the art pressure plate assessment during three static posturography conditions (eyes open, eyes closed and barefoot). The adaptive low pass filtered data resulted in an overall correlation of 0.63 to 0.78 for the sway path and 0.66 to 0.79 for the 95 % confidence ellipse area. Individual correlations of up to 0.97 for the sway path and 0.99 for the 95 % confidence ellipse area could be obtained. Future applications could utilize the mobile advantage of in-shoe pressure soles and measure static and dynamic posturography in clinical and home environments.