David Priemer: Using Technology for Falls Research BACK

Published by AFAR

I just finished the first three weeks of the program and it has been nothing but a positive experience thus far. I have helped conduct research as a volunteer in this laboratory before and thus have become reacquainted to many old faces, which is always nice, and have taken a step forward in the laboratory as someone who actually has their own project as opposed to being an aid in others.

I am completing my MSTAR project in a clinical biomechanics laboratory associated with the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The focus of this lab is the study of musculoskeletal aging, using motion technology, much like that used to make 3D games like Madden and movies like Avatar. We strategically place reflective markers on joint surfaces of our subjects and, using motion cameras that emit light and receive reflections off of the markers as information, we are able to record and analyze the movement of our subjects to get a unique look at how they control their movement.

The title of my project is "A comparison of stability during overground and treadmill walking in community-dwelling older adult fallers and non-fallers”. Very basically, I am studying the gait patterns of older adults between the conditions of walking over normal ground and on a treadmill while also comparing two groups of older adults that we’ve characterized as either “non-fallers”(those who report no falls within a year) and “fallers”(those who report multiple falls within a year) specifically looking at variables of step width, step width variability and margin of stability(a calculated measure of dynamic stability). The same protocol has been completed with a published manuscript through this lab using younger adults to study how gait changes between the two conditions. What I am investigating in this project are the differences between young subjects in the previous study and older subjects and also to see if we can differentiate “fallers” from “non-fallers” based on what we find.

During the first week of the program, I spent nearly all my time going through the lab’s contact lists and recruiting subjects, so far I have 19 of the 20 subjects we plan to have scheduled either in this month or the next. During the 2nd week and through to this one, I have mainly been seeing subjects and cleaning the motion data to prepare it for analysis. The protocol for each subject is completed in 1-2 hours, however converting what the motion cameras see as markers into something discernable as a moving body and ready for analysis(a process we call “cleaning”) can take several hours per subject, depending on how smoothly the data collection went. I have seen 9 subjects already and am thus approaching a sizable number of completed subjects with fully cleaned data so that I can begin preliminary analysis of their actual gait events.

Outside from the science for a moment, my experience has been a great one as well. As a primary investigator in this study and one who gets to interact with the subjects, I’ve gotten to meet and briefly get to know a small, but still diverse and interesting group of older adults with rich and active lives. Meeting these people would change anyone’s outlook on what it means to age should it be a negative one. The older adults in my study, whether they’ve been labeled as “fallers” or “non-fallers” have undoubtedly been and will continue be an inspiration to me as I continue this project.

David S. Priemer
Saint Louis University School of Medicine

 

"Diary of an MSTAR Student" follows scholars in the 2011 Medical Student Training in Aging Research (MSTAR) Program, highlighting their summer experiences. As they continue their path of research, training and clinical practice, read their daily thoughts at www.afar.org/mstarblog. New diary entries are posted every day, so check back soon.