Background:

Machine learning (ML) analysis of biometric data in non-controlled environments is underexplored.

Objective:

To evaluate whether ML analysis of physical activity data can be employed to classify whether individuals have postural dysfunction in middle-aged and older individuals.

Methods:

A 1 week period of physical activity was measured by a waist-worn uni-axial accelerometer during the 2003-2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey sampling period. Features of physical activity along with basic demographic information (42 variables) were paired with ML models to predict the success or failure of a standard 30 s modified Romberg test during which participants had their eyes closed and stood upon a 3-inch compliant surface. Model performance was evaluated by area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC-ROC), balanced accuracy, and F1-score.

Results:

The cohort was comprised of 1625 participants ≥40 years (median age 61, IQR 51-71). Approximately half (47%) were diagnosed with postural dysfunction having failed the binarized (pass/fail) scoring mechanism of the modified Romberg exam. Five ML models were trained on the classification task, achieving AUC values ranging from 0.67 to 0.73. The support vector machine (SVM) and a gradient-boosted model, XGBoost, achieved the highest AUC of 0.73 (SD 0.71-0.75). Age was the most important variable for SVM classification, followed by four features that evaluated accelerometer counts at various thresholds, including those delineating total, moderate, and moderate-vigorous activity.

Conclusions:

ML analysis of accelerometer-derived physical activity data to classify postural dysfunction in middle-aged and older individuals is feasible in real-world environments such as the home.

Level of evidence:

3 Laryngoscope, 133:3529-3533, 2023.