GaitKeeper

GaitKeeper: adding a dimension to gait measurement

Organiser: Cassim Ladha, VetSens

Schedule: Thursday 7th June, 16:00 - 16:45, G35

Gait is an important clinical assessment tool for humans and animals. While commonly measured subjectively in clinical practice, objective measurements are less common and generally restricted to bespoke laboratories. For spatio-temporal features, wearable sensors offer an alternative technology to cameras or mats and afford a freedom to make measurements almost anywhere. While this technology is well developed for humans and widespread amongst clinics, it has yet to become popular in veterinary practice.
In a  previous validation study on dogs, it was shown that precise time-based measurement of gait events is possible from leg mounted sensors on a quadruped [1]. This demonstration will build on the algorithmic components and add a modern web-based user-interface, synchronous video and an online interactive report (see the Figure below). The system builds from work in human gait analysis [2] and is developed around open source platforms. The demo forms part of ongoing work by VetSens to develop an accessible suite of movement imaging tools fit for clinical practice.

References
1. Ladha C, O’Sullivan J, Belshaw Z, Asher L. Gaitkeeper: A system for measuring canine gait. Sensors (Switzerland). 2017;17. doi:10.3390/s17020309
2. Ladha C, Del Din S, Nazarpour K, Hickey A, Morris R, Catt M, et al. Toward a low-cost gait analysis system for clinical and free-living assessment. 2016 38th Annu. Int. Conf. IEEE Eng. Med. Biol. Soc. IEEE; 2016. p. 1874–7.