Abstract
Wearable sensors are de facto revolutionizing the assessment of standing balance. The aim of this work is to review the state-of-the-art literature that adopts this new posturographic paradigm, i.e., to analyse human postural sway through inertial sensors directly worn on the subject body. After a systematic search on PubMed and Scopus databases, two raters evaluated the quality of 73 full-text articles, selecting 47 high-quality contributions. A good inter-rater reliability was obtained (Cohen’s kappa = 0.79). This selection of papers was used to summarize the available knowledge on the types of sensors used and their positioning, the data acquisition protocols and the main applications in this field (e.g., “active aging”, biofeedback-based rehabilitation for fall prevention, and the management of Parkinson’s disease and other balance-related pathologies), as well as the most adopted outcome measures. A critical discussion on the validation of wearable systems against gold standards is also presented.
Highlights
Human balance in the upright stance can be quantitatively evaluated by means of a posturographic examination
This study extends previous efforts by reviewing a large number of papers that use wearable sensors to assess postural balance and by providing a detailed overview of the most commonly reported applications that involve the use of wearable sensors to assess postural balance
The detailed results of the quality assessment performed by the raters on the 73 full-text articles are summarized in Table S1 and in Table S2
Summary
Human balance in the upright stance can be quantitatively evaluated by means of a posturographic examination. Posturography is the systematic measurement and interpretation of quantities that characterize postural sway in upright stance. Posturography exploits a force plate to evaluate the body’s postural sway by recording the trajectory of the Center of Pressure (COP), which is the point of application of the resultant ground reaction force [7]. The force plate is considered the gold standard to obtain reliable balance measurements, it is expensive and heavy to transport, making it impractical in clinical settings and sport centers.
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