Machine Learning-Based Pre-Impact Fall Detection Model to Discriminate Various Types of Fall

Pre-impact fall detection can send alarm service faster to reduce long-lie conditions and decrease the risk of hospitalization. Detecting various types of fall to determine the impact site or direction prior to impact is important because it increases the chance of decreasing the incidence or severity of fall-related injuries. In this study, a robust pre-impact fall detection model was developed to classify various activities and falls as multiclass and its performance was compared with the performance of previous developed models. Twelve healthy subjects participated in this study. All subjects were asked to place an inertial measuring unit module by fixing on a belt near the left iliac crest to collect accelerometer data for each activity. Our novel proposed model consists of feature calculation and infinite latent feature selection (ILFS) algorithm, auto labeling of activities, and application of machine learning classifiers for discrete and continuous time series data. Nine machine-learning classifiers were applied to detect falls prior to impact and derive final detection results by sorting the classifier. Our model showed the highest classification accuracy. Results for the proposed model that could classify as multiclass showed significantly higher average classification accuracy of 99.57 ± 0.01% for discrete data-based classifiers and 99.84 ± 0.02% for continuous time series-based classifiers than previous models (p < 0.01). In the future, multiclass pre-impact fall detection models can be applied to fall protector devices by detecting various activities for sending alerts or immediate feedback reactions to prevent falls.