Wearable sensors in ecological rehabilitation environments

Rehabilitation after injury or stroke is a long process towards regaining function, mobility, and independence. Changes exhibited in these areas tend to be subtle and highly dependent on the patient, their injury, and the intensity of rehabilitation efforts. Toprovide a fine-grained assessment of patient progress, we undertook a study to quantitatively capture movements during inpatient rehabilitation. We utilized wearable inertial sensors to collect data rom participants receiving therapy services at an inpatient rehabilitation facility. Participant performance was recorded in an ecological environment on a sequence of ambulatory tasks. A custom software system was developed to process sensor signals and compute metrics describing ambulation. A comparison of metrics one week apart suggests quantifiable changes in movement.