Analysis of the effect of muscle fatigue on gait characteristics using data acquired by wearable sensors

Abstract

Parkinson's disease (PD) patients suffer from numerous gait-related disturbances. Various factors contribute to the alteration in gait patterns, among which muscle fatigue plays a significant role. Traditional gait analysis techniques involve laboratory types of equipment that are expensive and require specialized personnel or software tools for analysis. In this paper, a portable wireless data acquisition system embedded with a network of wearable sensors is proposed that can aid real-time gait signal acquisition in an unconstrained environment. Experiments have been carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed system and to examine the effect of muscle fatigue in gait monitoring using mechanomyography techniques. Results show distinct variability in mean stride time and cadence with the influence of muscle fatigue.