Investigating the validity of a single tri-axial accelerometer mounted on the head for monitoring the activities of daily living and the timed-up and go test

Background: Quantitative assessments of activities of daily living (ADL) play an essential role in evaluating the impact of disease and interventions on people's quality of life. Motion capture systems traditionally used for quantitative assessments of postural transitions and movement associated with ADL are limited to the laboratory setting. Wearable accelerometers can remove these limitations and enable easier-to-use, longer-term, and remote functional evaluations. Objective: To investigate the validity of a single tri-axial accelerometer mounted on the head for monitoring postural transition and the timed-up-and-go test. Methods: Two accelerometers with a sampling frequency of 100 Hz were attached to twelve able-bodied study participants' sternum and right mastoid process. We developed algorithms for the functional calibration of accelerometers and the detection of the postural transitions by measuring the head inclination angle and variations of the gravitational components of the accelerometer readout. Participants performed a battery of ADL tests involving a wide variety of postural transitions. The head-mounted accelerometers results were compared with a sternum-mounted accelerometer and validated against a video motion capture system as a gold standard reference. Results and Significance: The results indicate that, utilizing our proposed algorithm, a single tri-axial accelerometer mounted on the head can deliver high accuracy (>95 %), sensitivity (>90 %), and specificity (100 %) for detecting both postural transitions and walking events. Together with the small size and unobtrusive placement of the head-mounted accelerometer, these results demonstrate an attractive solution for the reliable assessment of ADLs and clinical evaluations based on functional tests such as the timed-up-and-go test.