Objective Assessment of Functional Mobility using the TUG Test

Abstract

The advent of wearable sensors has made clinical assessment of movement possible in the home and community environments. The TUG test is perhaps the most commonly used clinical mobility assessment. Objective assessment of mobility tests using wearable sensors can improve the precision of clinical assessment and does not require specialist clinical expertise. We introduce a novel method to characterize mobility, using body-worn IMU sensors and the TUG test. The TUG test is broken down into the constituent elements of mobility (Speed, Variability, Symmetry, Transfers, Turning). A mobility score for each element is calculated by comparing each subject's sensor data against reference values derived from a population of 1,495 subjects.