CITRIS investigator Carolynn Patten, a professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at UC Davis, researches gait in older adults.
Gait, the medical term for the way a person walks, transforms as a person ages and is highly sensitive to changes in body systems. As Patten explains, careful analysis of an older adult’s gait can reveal a wealth of information about their health, including underlying conditions that may signal larger issues down the line.
Leveraging markerless motion capture technology, Patten’s lab has developed a non-invasive methodology to collect data and perform 3D analysis on the gait of older adults to efficiently provide a more comprehensive picture of health. Volunteers from the University Retirement Community (URC) at UC Davis performed simple movements, which were captured by a camera system and then analyzed using an artificial neural network, from which a number of quality parameters can be generated. Patten’s goal is to enable a novel predictive analytics tool that clinicians can use to detect underlying health conditions in older adults.
In 2021, Patten received a CITRIS Seed Award for a similar project with Xin Liu of UC Davis, where the team used wearable sensors to monitor step symmetry and help aging adults identify changes in their functional capacity and improve life planning.