Detecting concussion impairment with radar using gait analysis techniques

Several studies have shown that measuring changes in gait could provide an easier method of diagnosing and monitoring concussions. The purpose of this study was to measure radar signal returns to explore if differences in gait patterns between normal and "concussed" individuals could be identified from radar spectrogram data. Access to concussed individuals was not available during this feasibility study. Instead, based on research that demonstrated a blood alcohol content (BAC) of 0.05% was equivalent to concussion impairment, BAC impairment goggles were used to visually simulate a concussion. Both "impaired" and "not impaired" individuals 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 having the requirement of a priori knowledge on an individual. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were created to select the appropriate decision index, D(Q), values for acceptable true positive and false positive percentages.