Background: 
Gait improvement during stroke rehabilitation is measured by clinicians using qualitative observation and/or simple gait measures of gait. Quantitative gait analysis systems such as pressure-sensing walkways and infrared 3D-motion-capture systems offer more information but are typically are cost-prohibitive, confined to research settings, and capture few strides. Body-worn sensors could provide advantage as they are less expensive, spatially unconfined, and capture many strides. This study aims to evaluate agreement performance of a SensoPlex (Redwood City, CA) body-worn sensor compared towith a pressure-sensing walkway and 3D-motion-capture system.

Methods:
Three post-stroke participants (age:61.3±3.5; 7.53±6.27 yrs post-stroke) were recruited for this study. Data were collected simultaneously using Sensoplex body-worn sensors placed placed laterally at the ankle, a Protokinetics Zeno walkway (Havertown, PA), and an infrared 3D-motion-capture system. Participants walked at a self-preferred pace along a 10m walkway. Identical stride data was analyzed across all three systems for, including. The following measures were compared: gait velocity, stride length, gait cycle time, and swing period time.

Results: 
Three post-stroke participants (age:61.3±3.5; 7.53±6.27 yrs post-stroke) were recruited for this study. In total, 800 strides were analyzed. The first participant had a noticeable foot drop on the affected side; the remainder had an asymmetric gait. Table 1 shows the agreement of gait measures. The body-worn sensor had strongest agreement for gait cycle time (97-60%) with the walkway (Table 1), and showed stronger agreement for the Zeno Walkway (92-34%) than the 3D-motion-capture system (76-17%). Overall, there was good correlation between SensoPlex and both the 3-D motion-capture and Zeno-walkway (Table).  The strongest correlation was with velocity and cycle time and the weakest with stride length.

Conclusions:
Initial results show that the SensoPlex body-worn-sensor device provides good correlation with gold standards in gait measurement, and it can be clinically useful in the rehabilitation of stroke patients.

THE APPLICATION OF A NOVEL BODY-WORN SENSOR DEVICE TO ANALYZE GAIT FOR REHABILITATION OF STROKE PATIENTS