Analysis of body responses to an accelerating platform by the largest-Lyapunov-exponent method

Clinical Static Balance Assessment: A Narrative Review of Traditional and IMU-Based Posturography in Older Adults and Individuals with Incomplete Spinal Cord Injury

Maintaining a stable upright posture is essential for performing activities of daily living, and impaired standing balance may impact an individual's quality of life. Therefore, accurate and sensitive methods for assessing static balance are crucial for identifying balance impairments, understanding the underlying mechanisms of the balance deficiencies, and developing targeted interventions to improve standing balance and prevent falls. This review paper first explores the methods to quantify standing balance. Then, it reviews traditional posturography and recent advancements in using wearable inertial measurement units (IMUs) to assess static balance in two populations: older adults and those with incomplete spinal cord injury (iSCI). The inclusion of these two groups is supported by their large representation among individuals with balance impairments. Also, each group exhibits distinct aspects in balance assessment due to diverse underlying causes associated with aging and neurological impairment. Given the high vulnerability of both demographics to balance impairments and falls, the significance of targeted interventions to improve standing balance and mitigate fall risk becomes apparent. Overall, this review highlights the importance of static balance assessment and the potential of emerging methods and technologies to improve our understanding of postural control in different populations.

Analysis of human standing balance by largest lyapunov exponent

The purpose of this research is to analyse the relationship between nonlinear dynamic character and individuals' standing balance by the largest Lyapunov exponent, which is regarded as a metric for assessing standing balance. According to previous study, the largest Lyapunov exponent from centre of pressure time series could not well quantify the human balance ability. In this research, two improvements were made. Firstly, an external stimulus was applied to feet in the form of continuous horizontal sinusoidal motion by a moving platform. Secondly, a multiaccelerometer subsystem was adopted. Twenty healthy volunteers participated in this experiment. A new metric, coordinated largest Lyapunov exponent was proposed, which reflected the relationship of body segments by integrating multidimensional largest Lyapunov exponent values. By using this metric in actual standing performance under sinusoidal stimulus, an obvious relationship between the new metric and the actual balance ability was found in the majority of the subjects. These results show that the sinusoidal stimulus can make human balance characteristics more obvious, which is beneficial to assess balance, and balance is determined by the ability of coordinating all body segments.

Non-linear analysis of body responses to functional electrical stimulation on hemiplegic subjects

Functional electrical stimulation (FES) is a method of applying low-level electrical currents to restore or improve body functions lost through nervous system impairment. FES is applied to peripheral nerves that control specific muscles or muscle groups. Application of advanced signal computing techniques to the medical field has helped to achieve practical solutions to the health care problems accurately. The physiological signals are essentially non-stationary and may contain indicators of current disease, or even warnings about impending diseases. These indicators may be present at all times or may occur at random on the timescale. However, to study and pinpoint these subtle changes in the voluminous data collected over several hours is tedious. These signals, e.g. walking-related accelerometer signals, are not simply linear and involve non-linear contributions. Hence, non-linear signal-processing methods may be useful to extract the hidden complexities of the signal and to aid physicians in their diagnosis. In this work, a young female subject with major neuromuscular dysfunction of the left lower limb, which resulted in an asymmetric hemiplegic gait, participated in a series of FES-assisted walking experiments. Two three-axis accelerometers were attached to her left and right ankles and their corresponding signals were recorded during FES-assisted walking. The accelerometer signals were studied in three directions using the Hurst exponent H, the fractal dimension (FD), the phase space plot, and recurrence plots (RPs). The results showed that the H and FD values increase with increasing FES, indicating more synchronized variability due to FES for the left leg (paralysed leg). However, the variation in the normal right leg is more chaotic on FES.