relation: http://d-scholarship-dev.library.pitt.edu/37635/
title: How Well Can Wearable Devices Measure Physical Activity in Manual Wheelchair Users with Spinal Cord Injury
creator: Veerubhotla, Akhila
description: Manual wheelchair users (MWUs) with spinal cord injury (SCI) are at the lower end of the physical activity (PA) spectrum. Physical inactivity combined with physiological changes after SCI puts them at an increased risk for secondary health conditions such as cardiometabolic and cardiorespiratory diseases. Increased PA and decreased sedentary time have been shown to contribute to the primary and secondary prevention of chronic health conditions. The objective measurement of habitual PA is an important part of health promoting efforts to address physical inactivity. While wearable devices are believed to be best suited for objective measurement of PA in everyday life and are widely used in the ambulatory population, most commercially available devices do not cater to people with SCI. Currently there are limited validated tools that can provide comprehensive PA measures relevant to this population. This dissertation developed and evaluated custom algorithms for assessing activity intensities and wheelchair propulsion characteristics using off-the-shelf wearable devices in people with SCI. The data collection included a wide range of activities of daily living and exercises from lab-based structured protocols to a one-week community-based trial. Both traditional statistical modeling and machine learning techniques were used to develop the custom algorithms, and a rigorous procedure was followed to evaluate these algorithms, which includes not only iterative cross-validation, but also out-of-sample validation where a separate data set from the training data was used to evaluate the algorithm performance. The developed algorithms along with wearable devices from this dissertation could help researchers fill a number of voids in health and PA research targeting people with SCI and other mobility impairments.
date: 2019-09-16
type: University of Pittsburgh ETD
type: PeerReviewed
format: application/pdf
language: en
identifier: http://d-scholarship-dev.library.pitt.edu/37635/1/AV_dissertation_2.pdf
identifier:   Veerubhotla, Akhila  (2019) How Well Can Wearable Devices Measure Physical Activity in Manual Wheelchair Users with Spinal Cord Injury.  Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh.    (Unpublished)