Numerous gait event detection (GED) algorithms have been developed using accelerometers as they allow the possibility of long-term gait analysis in everyday life. However, almost all such existing algorithms have been developed and assessed using data collected in controlled indoor experiments with pre-defined paths and walking speeds. On the contrary, human gait is quite dynamic in the real-world, often involving varying gait speeds, changing surfaces and varying surface inclinations. Though portable wearable systems can be used to conduct experiments directly in the real-world, there is a lack of publicly available gait datasets or studies evaluating the performance of existing GED algorithms in various real-world settings.

This paper presents a new gait database called MAREA (n=20 healthy subjects) that consists of walking and running in indoor and outdoor environments with accelerometers positioned on waist, wrist and both ankles. The study also evaluates the performance of six state-of-the-art accelerometer-based GED algorithms in different real-world scenarios, using the MAREA gait database. The results reveal that the performance of these algorithms is inconsistent and varies with changing environments and gait speeds. All algorithms demonstrated good performance for the scenario of steady walking in a controlled indoor environment with a combined median F1score of 0.98 for Heel-Strikes and 0.94 for Toe-Offs. However, they exhibited significantly decreased performance when evaluated in other lesser controlled scenarios such as walking and running in an outdoor street, with a combined median F1score of 0.82 for Heel-Strikes and 0.53 for Toe-Offs. Moreover, all GED algorithms displayed better performance for detecting Heel-Strikes as compared to Toe-Offs, when evaluated in different scenarios. © 2016 Elsevier B.V.

Identifying Initial Contact events (ICE) is essential in gait analysis as they segment the walking pattern into gait cycles and facilitate the computation of other gait parameters. As such, numerous algorithms have been developed to identify ICE by placing the accelerometer at a specific body location. Simultaneously, many researchers have studied the effects of device positioning for participant or patient compliance, which is an important factor to consider especially for long-term studies in real-life settings. With the adoption of accelerometery for long-term gait analysis in daily living, current and future applications will require robust algorithms that can either autonomously adapt to changes in sensor positioning or can detect ICE from multiple sensors locations.

This study presents a novel methodology that is capable of estimating ICE from accelerometers placed at different body locations. The proposed methodology, called DK-TiFA, is based on utilizing domain knowledge about the fundamental spectral relationships present between the movement of different body parts during gait to drive the time-frequency analysis of the acceleration signal. In order to assess the performance, DK-TiFA is benchmarked on four large publicly available gait databases, consisting of a total of 613 subjects and 7 unique body locations, namely, ankle, thigh, center waist, side waist, chest, upper arm and wrist. The DK-TiFA methodology is demonstrated to achieve high accuracy and robustness for estimating ICE from data consisting of different accelerometer specifications, varying gait speeds and different environments. © 2017 Elsevier B.V.