A two-step fall detection algorithm combining threshold-based method and convolutional neural network

Abstract

Falls are one of the leading causes of disability and premature death among the elderly. Technical solutions designed to automatically detect a fall event may mitigate fall-related health consequences by immediate medical assistance. This paper presents a wearable device called TTXFD based on MPU6050 which can collect triaxial acceleration signals. We have also designed a two-step fall detection algorithm that fuses threshold-based method (TBM) and machine learning (ML). The TTXFD exploits the TBM stage with low computational complexity to pick out and transmit suspected fall data (triaxial acceleration data). The ML stage of the two-step algorithm is implemented on a server which encodes the data into an image and exploits a fall detection algorithm based on convolutional neural network to identify a fall on the basis of the image. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm achieves high sensitivity (97.83%), specificity (96.64%) and accuracy (97.02%) on the open dataset. In conclusion, this paper proposes a reliable solution for fall detection, which combines the advantages of threshold-based method and machine learning technology to reduce power consumption and improve classification ability.