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A wearable real-time activity tracker

Biomedical Engineering Letters volume 5, pages 147–157 (2015)Cite this article

Abstract

Purpose

Exercise and physical activity is a driving force for mental health. Major challenges in the treatment of psychological diseases are accurate activity profiles and the adherence to exercise intervention programs. We present the development and validation of CHRONACT, a wearable realtime activity tracker based on inertial sensor data to support mental health.

Methods

CHRONACT comprised a Human Activity Recognition (HAR) algorithm that determined activity levels based on their Metabolic Equivalent of Task (MET) with sensors on ankle and wrist. Special emphasis was put on wearability, real-time data analysis and runtime to be able to use the system as augmented feedback device. For the development, data of 47 healthy subjects performing clinical intervention program activities were collected to train different classification models. The most suitable model according to the accuracy and processing power tradeoff was selected for an embedded implementation on CHRONACT.

Results

A validation trial (six subjects, 6 h of data) showed the accuracy of the system with a classification rate of 85.6%. The main source of error was identified in acyclic activities that contained activity bouts of neighboring classes. The runtime of the system was more than 7 days and continuous result logging was available for 39 h.

Conclusions

In future applications, the CHRONACT system can be used to create accurate and unobtrusive patient activity profiles. Furthermore, the system is ready to assess the effects of individual augmented feedback for exercise adherence.

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Author information

Affiliations

  1. Digital Sports Group, Pattern Recognition Lab, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Haberstr.2, 91058, Erlangen, Germany

    Ulf Jensen, Heike Leutheuser, Steffen Hofmann, Benno Schuepferling & Bjoern M. Eskofier

  2. Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Erlangen, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Erlangen, Germany

    Gerald Suttner, Kristin Seiler & Johannes Kornhuber

Authors
  1. Ulf Jensen
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  2. Heike Leutheuser
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  3. Steffen Hofmann
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  4. Benno Schuepferling
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  5. Gerald Suttner
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  6. Kristin Seiler
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  7. Johannes Kornhuber
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  8. Bjoern M. Eskofier
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Correspondence to Ulf Jensen.

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Jensen, U., Leutheuser, H., Hofmann, S. et al. A wearable real-time activity tracker. Biomed. Eng. Lett. 5, 147–157 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13534-015-0184-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13534-015-0184-0

Keywords

  • Activity tracking
  • Wearable computing
  • Met levels
  • Accelerometers
  • Mental health