PCA-based SVM for automatic recognition of gait patterns

In this technical note, we investigate a combination PCA with SVM to classify gait pattern based on kinetic data. The gait data of 30 young and 30 elderly participants were recorded using a strain gauge force platform during normal walking. The gait features were first extracted from the recorded vertical directional foot- ground reaction forces curve using PCA, and then these extracted features were adopted to develop the SVM gait classifier. The test results indicated that the performance of PCA-based SVM was on average 90% to recognize young- elderly gait patterns, resulting in a markedly improved performance over an artificial neural network-based classifier. The classification ability of the SVM with polynomial and radial basis function kernels was superior to that of the SVM with linear kernel. These results suggest that the proposed technique could provide an effective tool for gait classification in future clinical applications.