SPECIAL SECTION ON UTILITY PATTERN MINING: THEORETICAL ANALYTICS AND

APPLICATIONS

Received February 25, 2020, accepted March 13, 2020, date of publication March 18, 2020, date of current version March 31, 2020.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2981670

Activity Pattern Mining for Healthcare

JIAXIN JIN1 , WANRONG SUN1 , FADI AL-TURJMAN 2,3 , MUHAMMAD BILAL KHAN1 ,
AND XIAODONG YANG 1 , (Senior Member, IEEE)
1 School of Electronic Engineering, Xidian University, Xi’an 710071, China
2 Artificial Intelligence Department, Near East University, 99138 Nicosia, Turkey
3 Research Centre for AI and IoT, Near East University, 99138 Nicosia, Turkey
Corresponding author: Xiaodong Yang (xdyang@xidian.edu.cn)
This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 61671349.

ABSTRACT Cerebellar Ataxia (CA) is a neurological disease with the symptom of poor coordination of
movement and balance disorders. In clinical medicine, the heel-knee-shin test and the rapid alternating
movements test are important basis for assessing CA. Based on the above tests, this paper presents a
non-contact method and investigates the feasibility of this method for detecting CA. This body sensor
networks uses wireless devices operating in the C-band frequency range to capture data of both types of tests
without intrusiveness. The obtained data of tests contains massive useful information about human health
which is really significant to subjects. But the information can be so subtle that people ignore the value hidden
in it. So utility pattern mining (UPM) is used for the purpose of mining subjects’ activity pattern. We find that
the subjects’ activity pattern differs greatly in amplitude information. We extracted the amplitude information
that is helpful for analyzing the test’ results to determine whether the test is positive or negative. Then we
use different kind of algorithms to classify the data samples. Among them, support vector machine (SVM)
has the best classification effect on both tests. In the heel-knee-shin test, the coincidence rate (π ) is 98.7%,
the sensitivity (Se) is 98.9% and the specificity (Sp) is 98.5%. In the rapid alternating movements test, the π
is 99.4%, Se is 99.8% and Sp is 99%. The experimental results show that this technique has the potential
to open up new clinical opportunities for contactless and accurate CA monitoring in a patient-friendly and
flexible environment.

INDEX TERMS Cerebellar Ataxia, body sensor networks, C-band, pattern mining.

I. INTRODUCTION In clinical practice, the performance of the patient in the

With the rapid development of society and the improve-
ment of living standards, people are paying more and more
attention to their own health. Cerebellar Ataxia is a class
of neurological diseases. After more than 1800 years of
exploration, people gradually realized that the basic function
of the Cerebellar is to coordinate movement [1]. Cerebellar
Ataxia refers to the coordination disorder of exercise in the
case of normal muscle strength. The amplitude and coordina-
tion of the voluntary movement of the limbs are disordered,
the posture and balance of the body can’t be maintained.
In 1902, the famous French neurologist Babinski proposed
for the first time that patients with cerebellar damage could
not complete continuous alternations well. He coined the term
dysdiadochokinesia to describe the inability to perform rapid
execution of movements requiring alternate contractions of
agonist and antagonist muscles [2].
The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and
approving it for publication was Jerry Chun-Wei Lin
assigned motor task is an important basis for clinician to
diagnose Cerebellar Ataxia. Studies have shown that tapping
test and Romberg test are sensitive for the detection of Cere-
bellar Ataxia and of changes in its severity [3]. The research
of Farinelli et al. [4] shows that CA patients are still able
to output an operative motor program (gait initiation) like
healthy individuals, but the slower and smaller first step may
be considered a compensatory strategy for an impaired bal-
ance control. Computer vision-based analysis of motor tasks
has also contributed to the diagnosis of cerebellar ataxia [5].
Still other studies use wearable inertial sensors to collect
subject-related limb motion information. Nguyen et al. [6]
used the wearable inertial sensors in the front and upper
back positions of the subjects to obtain test data during the
Romberg test and Trunk test. Pietro Caliandro’s research [7]
demonstrate that the use of inertial sensors is effective in eval-
uating gait and balance impairment among ataxic patients.
Krishna et al. [8] used acceleration sensors to collect test data
. to detect Ataxia. However, these detection methods are either

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J. Jin et al.: Activity Pattern Mining for Healthcare
cumbersome or require the subject to wear the appropriate
hardware device. This is expensive to test and is primarily
suitable for use in a laboratory environment. The wireless
sensing technology used in this paper is sensitive enough to
these characteristics of motor tasks and these characteristics
can be easily collected. Based on the technical characteristics
involved in this research, and due to the accuracy of the
research, in this study, we focused on the assessment of limb
motor function, with commonly used motor tasks including
the heel-knee-shin test and the rapid alternating movements
test. These tasks have the following in common:
• Movements that require action across limb joints
• Repetition and rhythm in a manner that requires some
accuracy in stopping and starting
• The subject needs posture stability to perform these
actions
From this body sensor networks, we can collect large
volumes of experimental data. These complex data contain
rich environmental information and human activity pattern
information. Mining the characteristics of human activity
pattern from these data is essential for effective analysis of
test results. Utility pattern mining (UPM) is a vital task in
many applications, including e-commerce, finance, cross-
marketing, medical, and biomedical applications [9], [10].
UPM considers the utility factors to find potentially useful
patterns that can be utilized in real-world applications [11].
However, each object is different in nature [12]. Finding out
the characteristics of the object is very important. By ana-
lyzing the channel information of wireless signals, the key
features of the activity are discovered. Then, we establish the
activity pattern and use different kind of algorithms to classify
the data. Results show that the derived pattern is reasonable,
and acceptable. This scheme provides an important basis for
the diagnosis of Cerebellar Ataxia.
The structure of this paper is as follows: section II gives
the basic theory of the wireless channel information (WCI),
section III gives the system design, section IV gives the
details of the experiment and analyzes the data, section V
provides data classification, section VI gives discussion and
section VII gives the conclusion.
II. WIRELESS CHANNEL INFORMATION
In recent years, with the rapid development of wireless net-
work devices and technologies, researchers have been able
to use wireless signals to sense and identify changes in
the environment. The idea of a wireless sensing system is
multipath propagation of wireless signals in indoor spaces,
including direct radiation, reflection, diffraction, and scatter
propagation. This multipath propagation is hampered by inte-
rior walls, floors, furniture and other obstacles. In addition,
human behavior always changes the propagation path of
wireless signals which changes the characteristics of received
wireless signal [13]–[15]. In particular, human motion can
cause multipath fading and Doppler shift, which indicates that
the received signal contains rich environmental information
about human behavior [16], [17].
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In order to characterize multipath propagation, wire-
less channels are usually modeled with Channel Impulse
Response (CIR). Under the assumption of linear time invari-
ance, CIR can be expressed as:
XN
h (τ ) = ai e−jθi δ(τ − τi ) (1)
i=1
where ai , θi , τi are the amplitude attenuation, phase offset
and time delay of the i-th path, N is the total number of
propagation paths, and δ(τ ) is the Diclad pulse function.
Each term in the formula represents the amplitude, phase,
and delay of a propagation path in the time domain. Due to
multipath propagation appears as frequency selective fading
in the frequency domain, multipath propagation can also be
characterized by Channel Frequency Response (CFR). CFR
contains the amplitude response and phase response. Under
the condition of unlimited bandwidth, CFR and CIR are
Fourier transforms of each other. Wireless channel in the
frequency domain is represented as a superposition of phase
and frequency of signals. The narrowband flat fading channel
model can be expressed in the frequency domain as:
Y =H ×X +N (2)
where Y represents the received signal vector, X represents
the transmitted signal vector, N represents the noise signal
vector, and H represents the channel state matrix. So we can
also get the channel state transition matrix:
     
y1 x1 h11 · · · h1M
Y =  ...  X =  ...  H =  ... ..
.
.. 
. 
    
yN xN hN 1 ··· hNM
 
n1
 .. 
N = .  (3)
nN
The wireless communication technology uses a MIMO-
OFDM system. Therefore, the matrix H is a complex matrix
of n ∗ m ∗ 30, where n is the number of transmitting antennas,
m is the number of receiving antennas, and 30 is the number
of subcarrier information. Each wireless channel information
packet received in this system contains 30 subcarriers. The
amplitude and phase information of each subcarrier is given
by
6 H (i)
H (i) = k H (i)k ei (4)
where H (i)Hi represents channel state information of the
i-th subcarrier, k H (i)k represents amplitude information, and
6 H (i) represents phase information.
This technology is currently widely used in medical
fields [18]–[20], including the detection of some respira-
tory [21] and neurological [22], [23] diseases. A large number
of studies have shown that the system designed based on
this technology has a good effect on detecting human life
features [24], [25]. This technology does not require the
subject to wear any hardware device. Instead, the device
performs the detection function only in a passive manner
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FIGURE 1. The logic flow of our system.
using a common commercial wireless device. More impor-
tantly, this technology can effectively protect personal pri-
vacy [26]. Moreover, the technology is not affected by light
conditions and has no blind spots, can usually work in line
of sight (LOS) and non-line of sight (NLOS) environments
and is non-invasive, robust. With the development of wire-
less technology, various wireless terminals are everywhere,
it makes the scheme based on this technology convenient and
low-cost.
III. SYSTEM DESIGN
A. SYSTEM FLOW
The basic idea of our system is to capture the behavioral
information of the subjects during the heel-knee-shin test
and the rapid alternating movements test, and to classify
the captured behavioral information. The results of the clas-
sification can provide an important objective basis for our
diagnosis. The system is divided into three parts, namely
data collection, preprocessing and finally the classification
and result analysis. The architecture of the system is shown
in Figure 1.
B. DATA COLLECTION
During the test, we used a combination of a transmitter
antenna and three receiving antennas to transmit and receive
electromagnetic signals. Due to the different placement posi-
tions of the three receiving antennas, some receiving antennas
may be subject to large interference when capturing behav-
ior information. Therefore, we must remove these signals
degraded by interference to prevent wrong information while
analyzing and classification of data. In the heel-knee-shin
test, the signal received by one antenna was greatly affected
by environmental interference, while the other two received
signals were less disturbed. In the rapid alternating move-
ments test, the signals received by the three receiving anten-
nas are less affected by environmental interference. In this
study, we selected all the subcarriers of the two receiving
antennas as the input signal of the system for the heel-knee-
shin test; for the rapid alternating movements test we used all
the subcarriers of the receiving antennas as the input signal
of the system.
Through this microwave sensing platform, we completed
the data collection. After screening the subcarriers, we can
get 12,000 subcarriers in the heel-knee-shin test. In the rapid
alternating movements test, we can get 18,000 subcarriers.
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J. Jin et al.: Activity Pattern Mining for Healthcare
C. PRE-PROCESSING
In both types of experiments, the amplitude information in
the wireless channel information is significantly different for
whether the test is positive or not. The phase information in
the wireless channel information is greatly disturbed by noise,
and phase-wrapping is prone to occur for these large-scale
actions, so it can’t reflect real human activity. In this study we
only extracted the amplitude information in the channel state
information. Then, we performed wavelet filtering on the
amplitude information. Wavelet filtering is chosen because
it uses a multi-resolution method, which can identify more
smoothly the non-stationary features of the signal, such as
edges, spikes, breakpoints, etc. and wavelet filtering can
complete the de-correlation of the signal, which is more
conducive to de-noising than the time domain. The Hampel
filter algorithm is then used to identify and remove outliers in
the data.
The comparison before and after filtering the amplitude
information is shown in Figure 2.
After pre-processing the amplitude information, we basi-
cally filter out the noise in the signal and completely preserve
the original signal.
D. CLASSIFICATION AND RESULTS ANALYSIS
After pre-processing, we remove a lot of noise and some
outliers, and retains relatively complete human behavior
information. We classify the preprocessed data signals using
Decision Trees [27], KNN [28], and SVM [29] classifica-
tion algorithms. The results of the classification can indicate
whether the subject’s test is positive or negative, provid-
ing the clinician with a diagnostic basis and reducing the
workload.
IV. EXPERIMENTS AND PERFORMANCE EVALUATION
A. EXPERIMENTAL DESCRIPTION
According to DeJong’s The Neurologic Examination [30],
the heel-knee-shin test and the rapid alternating movements
test are common methods for diagnosing Cerebellar Ataxia.
In this research, we recruited 5 volunteers to participate in the
test. In order to reflect the robustness and universality of this
system, and to demonstrate the authenticity of the test, both
tests were performed in an ordinary indoor environment of
university. The test was divided into two groups: the healthy
group and the Cerebellar Ataxia group. Each group of tests
was repeated 20 times for 5 subjects to collect sufficient data
samples for analysis. As this research involves the scien-
tific research of human body and the application of related
technologies, in order to protect human life and health, safe-
guard human dignity, respect and protect the legitimate rights
and interests of human subjects, the test must strictly abide
by the International Peace Convention ‘‘Industrial Guidance
- The E6 standard clinical trials (ICH GCP guideline E6),
the Helsinki Declaration (2002 edition), the Ministry of
Health ‘‘Human Medical Research Ethical Review Measures
(Trial)’’ and other relevant provisions and agreements signed
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J. Jin et al.: Activity Pattern Mining for Healthcare
FIGURE 2. The amplitude information: (a) The amplitude information
before filtering; (b) The amplitude information after filtering.
TABLE 1. The details of the 5 subjects.
with relevant international organizations. Therefore, the five
volunteers we recruited were all healthy. The test of the Cere-
bellar Ataxia group was simulated by healthy people. Under
the relevant national regulations and the guidelines issued
by international organizations, we have conducted systematic
training with the consent of the participants. The training
includes the following two aspects: 1. Review relevant med-
ical information to understand the symptoms of the disease
during the test; 2. View the medical videos of the relevant
tests. According to medical data, patients with Cerebellar
Ataxia will show corresponding symptoms when performing
two types of tests. During the heel-knee-shin test, the patient’s
movements are slightly trembled. During the rapid alternating
movements test, the patient’s movement showed symptoms
of uneven rhythm. Subjects underwent extensive rigorous
training on the simulation of these symptoms prior to the test.
All subjects did not take any medication within a few hours
prior to the test. And there is no alcohol abuse. The details of
the 5 subjects are shown in Table 1.
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FIGURE 3. Experimental scene plan.
B. EXPERIMENTAL SETUPS
The test uses a wireless device and a directional antenna,
and uses a C-band frequency based on the IEEE 802.11n
standard. In order to acquire electromagnetic wave signals,
the transmitter antenna is deployed as an access point (AP).
The receiving antenna is placed opposite the AP at a distance
of 1.2 meters. The distance between each receiving antenna is
greater than half the wavelength of the operating frequency to
prevent mutual interference between the receiving antennas.
This microwave sensing platform is deployed in the 4.8GHz
to 5GHz frequency band divided by 5G in China, which is an
important part of 5th generation mobile networks, the latest
official document released by the MIIT(Ministry of Industry
and Information Technology). The subject was tested in the
middle of the transmitter antenna and the receiver antennas.
Because we found that the microwave sensing platform is
very sensitive to this location and can detect subtle human
activities, which is very beneficial for us to analyze the char-
acteristics of human activities. There was only one subject
present when data was collected. During the test, the data
rate was 12 Mbits per second and the sampling rate was
set to 200 packets per second. According to the length of
the test, we select the appropriate amount of data packets
transmission for each types of tests. The test environment
is easy to deploy, data collection is non-invasive and can be
continuously monitored. The specific test scenario is shown
in Figure 3.
C. THE HEEL-KNEE-SHIN TEST
The procedure of the heel-knee-shin test is as follows: the
subject lay supine, the lower limb is raised, and the heel is
placed at the knee of the other lower limb, and then moved
down the leading edge of the tibia. This test is carried out
in the case of opening eyes, and the normal person moves
accurately. If the subject shakes when the legs moving down,
then the test is positive.
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 J. Jin et al.: Activity Pattern Mining for Healthcare

Figure 4 shows the original channel frequency response

(CFR) information for the healthy group and the Cerebellar
Ataxia group, with a clear distinction between the two groups.
Figure 4 (a) shows the different raw channel frequency
response data obtained from the tests by the healthy group
during the course of the experiment. In the figure, the y axis
represents 30 subcarriers, and the x axis is the time axis
represented by the number of packets. It can be seen that
there are roughly two blue stripes, which represent 30 subcar-
riers with two troughs at these two locations. CFR includes
amplitude and phase response. In this test, the amplitude
response can be used to visually analyze the time-frequency
characteristics of the signal, so we use the amplitude response
to analysis the signal. In order to analysis the amplitude
information of the response more intuitively, we selected the
30th subcarrier of the CFR stream as shown in Figure 4
(b). As can be seen from Figure 4 (b), the amplitude of the
30th subcarrier is relatively smooth. The entire test process
has about 1200 packets, about 6 seconds. During the test,
the amplitude of the subject fluctuated significantly due to
the movement of the subject, and the maximum peak-to-
peak value was about 10 dB. The amplitude of each place
has a slight fluctuation, but the maximum is no more than
0.5 dB. This 0.5 dB fluctuation is due to minor movements
in the surrounding environment, such as reflections from the
ceiling, breathing of the subject, and etc. When the Cerebellar
Ataxia group was tested, the changes in the original CFR is
shown in Figure 4 (c). We notice that compared to Figure 4
(a), Figure 4 (c) clearly has more stripes, that is, there are
multiple peaks and valleys with large fluctuations. This is the
basis for a strong distinction between the two results. In order
to more intuitively compare the amplitude information of the
two responses, we also select the 30th subcarrier in the CFR
stream as shown in Figure 4 (d). The amplitude information
shown in Figure 4 (d) has a general outline of Figure 4 (b), but
unlike Figure 4 (b), there are many significant small ampli-
tude fluctuations in Figure 4 (d). These small fluctuations are
about 2 dB, which is much larger than the fluctuation caused
by factors such as the environment and the breathing of the
subject. These small fluctuations were caused by the shaking
of the subject during the downward movement of the leg
in the test. By comparison, we can easily distinguish between
the healthy group and the Cerebellar Ataxia group based on
the amplitude information of their subcarriers.

FIGURE 4. The variances of CFR information obtained during the

D. THE RAPID ALTERNATING MOVEMENTS TEST
The procedure for the rapid alternating movements test is
as follows: the subject repeatedly beats the knee with the
palm and the back of the hand. This test is also performed
without closing the eyes, and the healthy group can complete
the rotation in an accurate and rapid manner. Patients with
Cerebellar Ataxia are awkward, slow, and uneven in rhythm.
Similarly, we distinguished the two groups by analyzing
the original CFR information. The CFR information for the
two groups is shown in Figure 5.
heel-knee-shin test: (a) The raw CFR data recorded for a person without
Cerebellar Ataxia; (b) Time history for the person without Cerebellar
Ataxia; (c) The raw CFR data recorded for the person with Cerebellar
Ataxia; (d) Time history for the person with Cerebellar Ataxia.
Figure 5(a) and 5(c) are CRF information plots for the
healthy group and the Cerebellar Ataxia group, respectively.
In the two figures, the x-axis represents 30 subcarriers, the
y-axis represents the time axis represented by the number
of packets, and the z-axis represents the amplitude. After

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J. Jin et al.: Activity Pattern Mining for Healthcare
FIGURE 5. The variances of CFR information obtained during the rapid
alternating movements test: (a) The raw CFR data recorded for the person
without Cerebellar Ataxia; (b) Time history for the person without
Cerebellar Ataxia(c) The raw CFR data recorded for the person with
Cerebellar Ataxia; (d) Time history for the person with Cerebellar Ataxia.
comparison, we found that there are many long ‘recesses’
on the y-axis in Figure 5(c). In order to further analyze
the experimental data, we compared the single subcarriers
of the two groups. Here, we selected the 21th subcarrier
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from the CFR stream of the healthy group, as shown
in Figure 5(b). Similarly, we also selected the 21th subcar-
rier from the CFR stream of the Cerebellar Ataxia group,
as shown in Figure 5(d). In Figure 5(b), the amplitude infor-
mation approximates a cosine signal on the y-axis. Its peak-
to-peak value is about 6 dB, and the period is between
40 to 50 packets, that is, between 0.2 to 0.25 seconds. Each
complete period of the signal is the action of a palm or
a back of the hand slap the knee. It can be seen that the
healthy group can complete the rotation action accurately
and quickly. In Figure 5(d), the amplitude information is
not regular on the y-axis. These approximate cosine signals
have different peak-to-peak values, with a maximum peak-
to-peak value of 5 dB and a minimum peak-to-peak value
of only 1 dB. The period is different. The longest period is
about 150 packets, which is about 0.75 second. The shortest is
about 30 packets, which is about 0.15 seconds. This suggests
that the Cerebellar Ataxia group is awkward and irregular in
rhythm.
The movement of the heel-knee-shin test is about the
stability of posture. The movement of the rapid alternating
movements test is more about the rhythm of motion. So we
only apply STFT on the rapid alternating movements test.
We do the following processing for the 21th subcarrier in
the CRF stream of the two groups: First, remove the DC
component of the signal; then, do the FFT transform (Fast
Fourier Transform) [31]. The results of the healthy group and
the Cerebellar Ataxia group are shown in Figure 6(a) and (b).
Comparing the two spectrograms, it is not difficult to
find that in the rapid alternating movements test, the slap
frequency of the healthy group is about 4.5 Hz, and the slap
frequencies of the Cerebellar Ataxia group is mainly 0.8 Hz
and 2.7 Hz. Neglecting the influence of interference signals in
the environment, the healthy group has a single and stable slap
frequency, while the Cerebellar Ataxia group has a variable
slap frequency. It is clear from the frequency domain analysis
that the Cerebellar Ataxia group has uneven limb rhythm.
Through the variation of the amplitude of the subcarriers
and the analysis of the spectrogram, we saw the difference in
limb movement between the healthy group and the Cerebellar
Ataxia group in the rapid alternating movements test. This
difference is significant enough that we can easily distinguish
between the healthy group and the Cerebellar Ataxia group.
V. DATA CLASSIFICATION
Although we can distinguish between the healthy group
and the Cerebellar Ataxia group in the heel-knee-shin test
and the rapid alternating movements test by observing the
amplitude changes of the subcarriers and their spectrograms.
But we hope that through machine learning, classification
can be done more accurately and efficiently, and the newly
obtained data signal categories can be predicted. In this
paper, we choose the Decision Tree classification algo-
rithm, K-Nearest Neighbor classification algorithm (KNN)
and SVM. Because a lot of research has shown that these
algorithms have a good effect in human activity classification.
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FIGURE 6. The FFT transform of the rapid alternating movements test:
(a) The FFT transform for a person without Cerebellar Ataxia; (b) The FFT
transform for the person with Cerebellar Ataxia.
The data of the heel-knee-shin test and the rapid alternating
movements test for classification are pre-processed. From
these pre-processed data, we can get 12000 samples for
the heel-knee-shin test and 18000 samples for the rapid
alternating movements test. For the purpose of training and
testing the classification model, we divided the samples
into a training set and a test set in a ratio of 4 to 1. So,
in this paper, 80% of the data samples are used to train the
model, and 20% of the data samples are used to test the
model.
Before classification, we must extract the features used
for classification. Therefore, we use utility pattern mining to
establish human activity pattern. Here, we define the basic
concepts involved in this paper. We label a test as T =<
Astart , Astart+1 , · · · , Aend > and the activity pattern as P =<
Ai · · · Aj >, where Ai (start <= Ai <= end) is an action
during the test.
Definition 1: The utility of an action A in the test T is
defined as follows:
u (A, T ) = iu(A, T ) × Au(i)
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J. Jin et al.: Activity Pattern Mining for Healthcare
TABLE 2. Two types of test prediction accuracy.
In the definition, iu(A, T ) is the internal utility of action A,
that is, the number of times A appears in the test, and Au(i) is
the external utility of action A. The utility value of action A
reflects the importance of the action to the activity pattern.
Definition 2: The utility of the activity pattern P in the test
T is defined as follows:
X
u (P, T ) = u(A, T ) (6)
A⊆P
Then, we use the HUI-Miner algorithm to mine discrimi-
native activity patterns from two group of tests. We process
this activity pattern into the feature vector format as input
to the classification model. Finally, we used three different
classification algorithms to classify the tests.
The results of using each machine learning classification
algorithm are shown in Table 2. In Table 2, The HKST
represents the heel-knee-shin test and The RAMT represents
the rapid alternating movements test.
From the Table 2 we can see that the SVM classification
algorithm has a good classification effect for both types of
experiments.
When evaluating diagnostic tests, coincidence rate (π ),
sensitivity (Se), omissiondiagnosticrate (β), specificity (Sp),
and mistakediagnosticrate (α) are commonly used analysis
indicators. The coincidence rate indicates the degree of agree-
ment between the diagnostic test results and the actual situa-
tion, and reflects the ability to correctly diagnose patients and
non-patients. Sensitivity reflects the ability to detect patients.
The larger the value, the stronger the detection ability. Omis-
sion diagnosticrate is complementary to sensitivity, reflect-
ing the possibility of misdiagnosing patients. The specificity
reflects the ability to identify non-patients, and the mistake-
diagnosticrate reflects the possibility of misdiagnosing non-
patients, and they are complementary. In the heel-knee-shin
test, π , Se, β, Sp and α were 98.7%, 98.9%, 1.1%, 98.5% and
1.5% respectively. In the rapid alternating movements test,
π , Se, β, Sp and α were 99.4%, 99.8%, 0.2%, 99% and 1%
respectively. Some indicators of the two groups of tests are
shown in Figure 7. In Figure 7, The HKST represents the heel-
knee-shin test and The RAMT represents the rapid alternating
movements test.
Evaluation indicators show that the diagnostic method
based on this scheme has achieved good results. We can
provide a more objective and accurate basis to help clinicians
(5) diagnose Cerebellar Ataxia.
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J. Jin et al.: Activity Pattern Mining for Healthcare
FIGURE 7. The indicators of the two groups of tests.
VI. DISCUSSION
Currently, wireless channel information technology has been
used in many medical applications. However, the diagnosis of
Cerebellar Ataxia is mostly sensor-based, and almost no rel-
evant research is based on wireless channel information tech-
nology. This study innovatively diagnoses cerebellar ataxia
by using-wireless technology based on wireless channel state
information, and machine learning algorithms are applied for
accurate classification of tests. Compared with sensor-based
research, wireless channel state information technology does
not require to wear any special hardware equipment, the
environment is very convenient and cheap to deploy, and pas-
sive detection can be realized without intrusion. The image
information of the experimental results is very straightfor-
ward, and classification of test can achieve higher accuracy.
Of course, at this stage, there are still some shortcomings in
this study, such as insufficient sample subjects, and no further
optimization of the machine learning algorithm. However,
to a certain extent, this study can objectively and accurately
help doctors diagnose Cerebellar Ataxia and reduce the work-
load. Moreover, the deployment of the test environment is
simple, and can be used in hospitals, communities and homes,
and doesn’t require any professional technology of the oper-
ator and are easy to use.
VII. CONCLUSION
Cerebellar Ataxia is caused by various factors in different
parts of the cerebellum. It brings a lot of inconvenience
to the daily life of the patient, which affects the quality
of life and brings great harm to the physical and mental
health of the patient. In this paper, we proposed a System
applied in the field of smart medicine which can help doctors
diagnose Cerebellar Ataxia through the heel-knee-shin test
and the rapid alternating movements test. Using this non-
invasive approach, we collected data from two types of tests.
It has been found that the experimental data of the healthy
group and the Cerebellar Ataxia group vary greatly in ampli-
tude information. For both types of tests, SVM achieves
the best classification effect. In the heel-knee-shin test, the
coincidence rate is 98.7%, the sensitivity is 98.9% and the
specificity is 98.5%. In the rapid alternating movements test,
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the coincidence rate is 99.4%, the sensitivity is 99.8% and the
specificity is 99%.
The sooner patients with Cerebellar Ataxia are found to
be critical for the treatment of Cerebellar Ataxia. The data
we collect using the non-contact method contains amplitude
and phase information, which hides a wealth of behavioral
information that is not easily observable by the naked eye.
The combination of this technology and machine learning can
effectively distinguish the healthy group and the Cerebellar
Ataxia group. The results show that this System is feasible
to help doctors detect Cerebellar Ataxia. However, at the
present stage of the research, this system cannot be applied
for multiple subjects. In future research, we hope to complete
the work of applying the system for multiple subjects and find
its application in other important fields [26], [32].
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JIAXIN JIN is currently with Xidian University.
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J. Jin et al.: Activity Pattern Mining for Healthcare
WANRONG SUN is currently a Full Professor
with the School of Electronic Engineering, Xidian
University. Her research interests include biomed-
ical signal processing, signal detection, and virtual
testing technique.
FADI AL-TURJMAN received the Ph.D. degree
in computer science from Queen’s University,
Kingston, ON, Canada, in 2011. He is currently
a Professor with Near East University, Nicosia,
Turkey. He is a leading authority in the areas
of smart/cognitive, wireless, and mobile networks
architectures, protocols, deployments, and perfor-
mance evaluation. His publication history spans
over 250 publications in journals, conferences,
patents, books, and book chapters, in addition
to numerous keynotes and plenary talks at flagship venues. He has
authored/edited more than 25 books about cognition, security, and wireless
sensor networks deployments in smart environments, published by Taylor &
Francis and Springer. He has received several recognitions and best papers
awards at top international conferences. He also received the prestigious Best
Research Paper Award from Elsevier Computer Communications journal for
the period 2015–2018, in addition to the Top Researcher Award for 2018 at
Antalya Bilim University, Turkey. He has led a number of international
symposia and workshops in flagship communication society conferences.
He currently serves as a lead guest editor for several well reputed journals,
including the Elsevier Computer Communications (COMCOM), Sustainable
Cities and Society (SCS), IET Wireless Sensor Systems, and the Springer
EURASIP and MONET journals.
MUHAMMAD BILAL KHAN is currently pursu-
ing the Ph.D. degree with Xidian University.
XIAODONG YANG (Senior Member, IEEE) has
published over 100 articles in peer-reviewed jour-
nals. His main research area is body area net-
works. He received the Young Scientist Award
from the International Union of Radio Science,
in 2014. He is on the editorial board of several
IEEE and IET journals. He has a global collabo-
rative research network in the related fields.
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