Privacy-Preserving Approach for Early Detection of Long-Lie Incidents: A Pilot Study with Healthy Subjects

(1) Background: Detecting long-lie incidents—where individuals remain immobile after a fall—is essential for timely intervention and preventing severe health consequences. However, most existing systems focus only on fall detection, neglect post-fall monitoring, and raise privacy concerns, especiall...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Riska Analia, Anne Forster, Sheng-Quan Xie, Zhiqiang Zhang
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2025-06-01
Series:Sensors
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/25/12/3836
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1849433866489561088
author Riska Analia
Anne Forster
Sheng-Quan Xie
Zhiqiang Zhang
author_facet Riska Analia
Anne Forster
Sheng-Quan Xie
Zhiqiang Zhang
author_sort Riska Analia
collection DOAJ
description (1) Background: Detecting long-lie incidents—where individuals remain immobile after a fall—is essential for timely intervention and preventing severe health consequences. However, most existing systems focus only on fall detection, neglect post-fall monitoring, and raise privacy concerns, especially in real-time, non-invasive applications; (2) Methods: This study proposes a lightweight, privacy-preserving, long-lie detection system utilizing thermal imaging and a soft-voting ensemble classifier. A low-resolution thermal camera captured simulated falls and activities of daily living (ADL) performed by ten healthy participants. Human pose keypoints were extracted using MediaPipe, followed by the computation of five handcrafted postural features. The top three classifiers—automatically selected based on cross-validation performance—formed the soft-voting ensemble. Long-lie conditions were identified through post-fall immobility monitoring over a defined period, using rule-based logic on posture stability and duration; (3) Results: The ensemble model achieved high classification performance with accuracy, precision, recall, and an F1 score of 0.98. Real-time deployment on a Raspberry Pi 5 demonstrated the system is capable of accurately detecting long-lie incidents based on continuous monitoring over 15 min, with minimal posture variation; (4) Conclusion: The proposed system introduces a novel approach to long-lie detection by integrating privacy-aware sensing, interpretable posture-based features, and efficient edge computing. It demonstrates strong potential for deployment in homecare settings. Future work includes validation with older adults and integration of vital sign monitoring for comprehensive assessment.
format Article
id doaj-art-e20a2c6961ec4e73943abf017a1caa30
institution Kabale University
issn 1424-8220
language English
publishDate 2025-06-01
publisher MDPI AG
record_format Article
series Sensors
spelling doaj-art-e20a2c6961ec4e73943abf017a1caa302025-08-20T03:26:52ZengMDPI AGSensors1424-82202025-06-012512383610.3390/s25123836Privacy-Preserving Approach for Early Detection of Long-Lie Incidents: A Pilot Study with Healthy SubjectsRiska Analia0Anne Forster1Sheng-Quan Xie2Zhiqiang Zhang3School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UKAcademic Unit for Ageing and Stroke Research, Leeds Institute of Health Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9LN, UKSchool of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UKSchool of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK(1) Background: Detecting long-lie incidents—where individuals remain immobile after a fall—is essential for timely intervention and preventing severe health consequences. However, most existing systems focus only on fall detection, neglect post-fall monitoring, and raise privacy concerns, especially in real-time, non-invasive applications; (2) Methods: This study proposes a lightweight, privacy-preserving, long-lie detection system utilizing thermal imaging and a soft-voting ensemble classifier. A low-resolution thermal camera captured simulated falls and activities of daily living (ADL) performed by ten healthy participants. Human pose keypoints were extracted using MediaPipe, followed by the computation of five handcrafted postural features. The top three classifiers—automatically selected based on cross-validation performance—formed the soft-voting ensemble. Long-lie conditions were identified through post-fall immobility monitoring over a defined period, using rule-based logic on posture stability and duration; (3) Results: The ensemble model achieved high classification performance with accuracy, precision, recall, and an F1 score of 0.98. Real-time deployment on a Raspberry Pi 5 demonstrated the system is capable of accurately detecting long-lie incidents based on continuous monitoring over 15 min, with minimal posture variation; (4) Conclusion: The proposed system introduces a novel approach to long-lie detection by integrating privacy-aware sensing, interpretable posture-based features, and efficient edge computing. It demonstrates strong potential for deployment in homecare settings. Future work includes validation with older adults and integration of vital sign monitoring for comprehensive assessment.https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/25/12/3836long-lie detectionthermal imagingensemble learningprivacy-preserving monitoringedge computing
spellingShingle Riska Analia
Anne Forster
Sheng-Quan Xie
Zhiqiang Zhang
Privacy-Preserving Approach for Early Detection of Long-Lie Incidents: A Pilot Study with Healthy Subjects
Sensors
long-lie detection
thermal imaging
ensemble learning
privacy-preserving monitoring
edge computing
title Privacy-Preserving Approach for Early Detection of Long-Lie Incidents: A Pilot Study with Healthy Subjects
title_full Privacy-Preserving Approach for Early Detection of Long-Lie Incidents: A Pilot Study with Healthy Subjects
title_fullStr Privacy-Preserving Approach for Early Detection of Long-Lie Incidents: A Pilot Study with Healthy Subjects
title_full_unstemmed Privacy-Preserving Approach for Early Detection of Long-Lie Incidents: A Pilot Study with Healthy Subjects
title_short Privacy-Preserving Approach for Early Detection of Long-Lie Incidents: A Pilot Study with Healthy Subjects
title_sort privacy preserving approach for early detection of long lie incidents a pilot study with healthy subjects
topic long-lie detection
thermal imaging
ensemble learning
privacy-preserving monitoring
edge computing
url https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/25/12/3836
work_keys_str_mv AT riskaanalia privacypreservingapproachforearlydetectionoflonglieincidentsapilotstudywithhealthysubjects
AT anneforster privacypreservingapproachforearlydetectionoflonglieincidentsapilotstudywithhealthysubjects
AT shengquanxie privacypreservingapproachforearlydetectionoflonglieincidentsapilotstudywithhealthysubjects
AT zhiqiangzhang privacypreservingapproachforearlydetectionoflonglieincidentsapilotstudywithhealthysubjects