Towards an Inertial Sensor-Based Wearable Feedback System for Patients after Total Hip Arthroplasty: Validity and Applicability for Gait Classification with Gait Kinematics-Based Features

Patients after total hip arthroplasty (THA) suffer from lingering musculoskeletal restrictions. Three-dimensional (3D) gait analysis in combination with machine-learning approaches is used to detect these impairments. In this work, features from the 3D gait kinematics, spatio temporal parameters (Set 1) and joint angles (Set 2), of an inertial sensor (IMU) system are proposed as an input for a support vector machine (SVM) model, to differentiate impaired and non-impaired gait. The features were divided into two subsets. The IMU-based features were validated against an optical motion capture (OMC) system by means of 20 patients after THA and a healthy control group of 24 subjects. Then the SVM model was trained on both subsets. The validation of the IMU system-based kinematic features revealed root mean squared errors in the joint kinematics from 0.24° to 1.25°. The validity of the spatio-temporal gait parameters (STP) revealed a similarly high accuracy. The SVM models based on IMU data showed an accuracy of 87.2% (Set 1) and 97.0% (Set 2). The current work presents valid IMU-based features, employed in an SVM model for the classification of the gait of patients after THA and a healthy control. The study reveals that the features of Set 2 are more significant concerning the classification problem. The present IMU system proves its potential to provide accurate features for the incorporation in a mobile gait-feedback system for patients after THA.