Multiple comparator classifier framework for accelerometer-based fall detection and diagnostic

There are a significant number of high fall risk individuals who are susceptible to falling and sustaining severe injuries. An automatic fall detection and diagnostic system is critical for ensuring a quick response with effective medical aid based on relative information provided by the fall detection system. This article presents and evaluates an accelerometer-based multiple classifier fall detection and diagnostic system implemented on a single wearable Shimmer device for remote health monitoring. Various classifiers have been utilised within literature, however there is very little current work in combining classifiers to improve fall detection and diagnostic performance within accelerometer-based devices. The presented fall detection system utilises multiple classifiers with differing properties to significantly improve fall detection and diagnostic performance over any single classifier and majority voting system. Additionally, the presented multiple classifier system utilises comparator functions to ensure fall event consistency, where inconsistent events are outsourced to a supervisor classification function and discrimination power is considered where events with high discrimination power are evaluated to further improve the system response. The system demonstrated significant performance advantages in comparison to other classification methods, where the proposed system obtained over 99% metrics for fall detection recall, precision, accuracy and F-value responses. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.