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Estimate of gait speed by using persons’ walk ratio or step-frequency in older adults

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Abstract

Background and aims

Gait speed estimation using wearable inertial sensors during daily activities suffers from high complexity and inaccuracies in distance estimation when integrating acceleration signals. The aim of the study was to investigate the agreement between the methods of gait speed estimation using the persons’ walk ratio (step-length/step-frequency relation) or step-frequency (number of steps per minute) and a “gold standard”.

Methods

For this cross-sectional validation study, 20 healthy community-dwelling older persons (mean age 72.1 years; 70% women) walked at slow, normal, and fast speed over an instrumented walkway (reference measure). Gait speed was calculated using the person’s pre-assessed walk ratio. Furthermore, the duration of walking and number of steps were used for calculation.

Results

The agreement between gait speed calculation using the walk ratio or step-frequency (adjusted to body height) and reference was r = 0.98 and r = 0.93, respectively. Absolute and relative mean errors of calculated gait speed using pre-assessed walk ratio ranged between 0.03–0.07 m/s and 1.97–4.17%, respectively.

Discussion and conclusions

After confirmation in larger cohorts of healthy community-dwelling older adults, the mean gait speed of single walking bouts during activity monitoring can be estimated using the person’s pre-assessed walk ratio. Furthermore, the mean gait speed can be calculated using the step-frequency and body height and can be an additional parameter in stand-alone activity monitoring.

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Availability of data and materials

The datasets generated during this study are not publicly available but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Code availability

Not applicable.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Lara Popp for data collection.

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Clinical Gerontology and Rehabilitation, Clinic for Geriatric Rehabilitation, Robert-Bosch-Hospital, Stuttgart, Germany

    Ulrich Lindemann, Lars Schwickert, Clemens Becker, Michaela Gross & Jochen Klenk

  2. International University of Comparative Education, Stuttgart, Germany

    Regina Nolte

  3. Institute of Epidemiology and Medical Biometry, Ulm University, Ulm, Germany

    Jochen Klenk

  4. IB University of Applied Health and Social Science, Study Centre Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

    Jochen Klenk

Authors
  1. Ulrich Lindemann
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  2. Lars Schwickert
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  3. Clemens Becker
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  4. Michaela Gross
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  5. Regina Nolte
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  6. Jochen Klenk
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Data collection and analysis were performed by UL and JK. The first draft of the manuscript was written by UL, LS and JK and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ulrich Lindemann.

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Conflict of interest

Clemens Becker has received consultant fees from E. Lilly company and Bosch Health care. He has also received speaker honoraria from Amgen and Nutricia. Lars. Schwickert has received consultant fees from Rölke Pharma GmbH. On behalf of all other authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

The study was performed in accordance with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments. This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors. The study protocol was approved by the ethical committee of the University of Tuebingen (240/2019BO2).

Informed consent

All participants of this project gave written informed consent for data analysis and publication.

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Lindemann, U., Schwickert, L., Becker, C. et al. Estimate of gait speed by using persons’ walk ratio or step-frequency in older adults. Aging Clin Exp Res 33, 2989–2994 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40520-021-01832-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40520-021-01832-z

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