Feature selection, construction and test of model for estimating lower extremity strength of older adults using foot motion measured by an in-shoe motion sensor.

Abstract

Lower extremity strength (LES) is essential to support activities in daily living. To extend healthy life expectancy of elderly people, early detection of LES weakness is important. In this study, we challenge to develop a method for LES assessment in daily living via an in-shoe motion sensor (IMS). To construct the estimation model, we collected data from 62 subjects. We used the outcome of the five-times-sit-to-stand test to represent the performance of LES as the target variable. Predictors were constructed from the subjects' foot motions measured by the IMS during straight path walking. We used the leave-one-subject-out least absolute shrinkage and selection operator algorithm to select features and construct respective models for the males and females. As a result, the models achieved fair and a good intra-class correlation coefficient agreement between the true and estimation values, with mean absolute errors of 2.14 and 1.21 s (variation of 23.6 and 16.0%), respectively. To validate the models, we separately collected data from 45 subjects. The models successfully predicted 100% and 90% of the male and female subjects' data, respectively, which suggests the robustness of the constructed estimation models. The results suggested that LES can be identified more effectively in daily living by wearing an IMS, and the use of an IMS has the potential for future frailty and fall risk assessment applications.