Revised Stability Scales of the Postural Stability Index for Human Daily Activities

Abstract

Evaluation of human postural stability is important to prevent falls. Recent studies have been carried out to develop postural stability evaluation in an attempt to fall prevention. The postural stability index (PSI) was proposed as a measure to evaluate the stability of human postures in performing daily activities. The objective of this study was to use the PSI in developing the stability scales for human daily activities. The current study used two open datasets collected from mobile devices. In addition, we also conducted three experiments to evaluate the effect of age, velocity, step counts, and devices on PSI values. The collected datasets were preprocessed using the ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD), then the complexity index from each intrinsic mode function (IMF) was calculated using the multiscale entropy (MSE). From the evaluation, it can be concluded that the PSI can be applied to do daily monitoring of postural stability for both young and older adults, and the PSI is not affected by age. The revised stability scales developed in this current study can give better suggestions to users than the original one.

Keywords

• postural stability index
• multiscale entropy
• ensemble empirical mode decomposition
• intrinsic mode function