Timed Up & Go Test Using an iPhone
2010
Context
Semester Project EPFL
Description
In the clinical domain, testing the mobility of a patient is a common task for a doctor. To do so, he usually applies the Timed Up and Go test (TUG) on his patients. This test consists of several steps. The patient is seated on a chair and the doctor stands next to him holding a chronometer. On the doctor's instruction, the patient stands up from the chair, walks 3 meters, turns around, walks back to the chair and sits down. The main information that one gets from this test is the total time of the operation. A healthy patient would typically need less than 14 seconds to complete the test. His mobility is considered as normal. On the other hand, if the time needed exceeds 30 seconds, his mobility is considered as strongly limited. The goal of this project is to establish an iTUG test using the iPhone mobile's sensor.
This project will be accomplished using the following approach :
1. First of all, a short reflection will be done to choose the most adapted system configuration.
2. A database of TUG tests for several patients. Thus having for each test the signals coming from the iPhone and the Physilog body sensor (as a comparison source), and also the extra timed parameters.
3. Code an algorithm on Matlab to detect the TUG time, the number of steps and the turn time.
4. Validate the use and the performance of the system on healthy patients (from the database)
One of the main requirements for this application is that is has to be robust, i.e. that it
must able to work with all kinds of people, be they young and healthy or old and with
slow movements. This application needs also to be precise, accurate and easy to use.
