A comparison study of local dynamic stability measures of daily life walking in older adult community-dwelling fallers and non-fallers

In the present study we compared the performance of three different estimations of local dynamic stability λ to distinguish between the dynamics of the daily-life walking of elderly fallers and non-fallers. The study re-analyses inertial sensor data of 3-days daily-life activity originally described by Weiss et al. (2013). The data set contains inertial sensor data from 39 older persons who reported less than 2 falls and 31 older persons who reported two or more falls the previous year. 3D-acceleration and 3D-velocity signals from walking epochs of 50 s were used to reconstruct a state space using three different methods. Local dynamic stability was estimated with the algorithms proposed by Rosenstein et al. (1993), Kantz (1994), and Ihlen et al. (2012a). Median λs assessed by Ihlen׳s and Kantz׳ algorithms discriminated better between elderly fallers and non-fallers (highest AUC=0.75 and 0.73) than Rosenstein׳s algorithm (highest AUC=0.59). The present results suggest that the ability of λ to distinguish between fallers and non-fallers is dependent on the parameter setting of the chosen algorithm. Further replication in larger samples of community-dwelling older persons and different patient groups is necessary before including the suggested parameter settings in fall risk assessment and prediction models.