Inertial Sensing-Based Pre-Impact Detection of Falls Involving Near-Fall Scenarios

Although near-falls (or recoverable imbalances) are common episodes for many older adults, they have received a little attention and were not considered in the previous laboratory-based fall assessments. Hence, this paper addresses near-fall scenarios in addition to the typical falls and activities of daily living (ADLs). First, a novel vertical velocity-based pre-impact fall detection method using a wearable inertial sensor is proposed. Second, to investigate the effect of near-fall conditions on the detection performance and feasibility of the vertical velocity as a fall detection parameter, the detection performance of the proposed method (Method 1) is evaluated by comparing it to that of an acceleration-based method (Method 2) for the following two different discrimination cases: falls versus ADLs (i.e., excluding near-falls) and falls versus non-falls (i.e., including near-falls). Our experiment results show that both methods produce similar accuracies for the fall versus ADL detection case; however, Method 1 exhibits a much higher accuracy than Method 2 for the fall versus non-fall detection case. This result demonstrates the superiority of the vertical velocity over the peak acceleration as a fall detection parameter when the near-fall conditions are included in the non-fall category, in addition to its capability of detecting pre-impact falls.