Digital Biomarkers

Gait Biomechanics

Background

Pain is subjective and can be influenced by a number of physical, mental, and socioeconomic factors. In order to close the loop on treatments (i.e., effectively measure drug effect and adjust treatments), an objective way of quantifying pain is required to replace subjective PROs.

Approach

Measurement of gait asymmetry caused by lower limb pain using shoe-mounted accelerometers.

Under the hood

Circadic ran a pilot study where participants that presented OA pain symptoms were provided with shoe accelerometers that were worn before and after intervention. Participants also provided daily pain estimates during their treatment. The accelerometer data were used to construct gait asymmetry features. Features were correlated with daily, patient-reported pain levels to train an interpretable ML algorithm. The system was able to track arthritic lower limb pain levels based on the way participants walked (antalgic gait) with an accuracy of +-1 points, on a 0-10 pain score scale.