The Assessments of Jumping Movement Quality and Control by Using IMU and Its Clinical Applications

In recent years, the inertial measurement unit (IMU) has been widely used in medical care and biomechanics for movement analysis and evaluation. Jump is one of the complex activities requires intact multi-system integration and had been widely used as an important clinical indicator. In this paper, we proposed a real-time algorithm for parameter estimation and movement classification with single IMU for analyzing jumping movement. Data collected from healthy adults were used as control and experimental setup, and further tested in patients with lumbar spine disease. Experimental results showed that the mean absolute error of flight time, height, frequency and take-off acceleration of jumping movement compared with Vicon can achieve 0.01 s, 0.8 cm, 0.04 Hz, and 0.24 m/s2, respectively. The accuracy of classification can reach 97.5%. Jumping parameters measured by IMU in patients groups showed significant lower performance in bi- jumping, right hopping test, left hopping test, and spin test. Using the system we developed, we can accurately assess the jumping function of subject.