Tracking real-world changes in osteoarthritic gait patterns using wearable sensors

Gait analysis is useful in understanding healthy aging, and the etiology and progression of common musculoskeletal disorders that accompany older age, such as osteoarthritis. Conventional gait analysis systems, involving motion capture cameras, are expensive and confined to laboratory settings limiting their accessibility and generalizability. Wearable inertial sensors make gait assessments more accessible and affordable, allow for assessments in real-world, out-of-lab environments, and can help alert health care providers to significant gait changes which may be related to osteoarthritis treatment or progression. This research will measure day-to-day fluctuations in the out-of-lab gait patterns of older adults with knee osteoarthritis through a dual-task perturbation measured by wearable inertial sensors.