Orthopedic Walker Fall Detection and Motion Classification Using Bidirectional Gated Recurrent Unit Neural Network

Accurate fall detection for orthopedic walker users is essential for timely medical intervention and enhancing safety for elderly and mobility-impaired individuals. This paper introduces a new method using a bidirectional gated recurrent unit (BiGRU) neural network to detect falls and classify motion patterns in walker usage. We use the Walker dataset, which includes inertial measurement unit sensor data for four motion classes: idle, motion, step, and fall. The dataset consists of 6-axis IMU readings (3-axis accelerometer and 3-axis gyroscope) from sensors mounted on orthopedic walkers, with around 620 samples per class. Our BiGRU model leverages temporal dependencies in both forward and backward directions to improve classification accuracy. We assess the model’s performance in two scenarios: binary classification (fall vs. non-fall) and multi-class classification of all four motion types. The proposed architecture shows strong performance, achieving 99.79% accuracy and a 99.73% F1-score in binary classification, and 98.51% accuracy and a 98.50% F1-score in multi-class classification. It outperforms traditional deep learning models like CNN, LSTM, and GRU. The experimental results confirm the effectiveness of bidirectional processing in capturing temporal motion patterns, indicating significant potential for realtime fall detection in walker-assisted mobility. The high precision and recall values in both scenarios demonstrate the model’s reliability for practical healthcare monitoring applications.