Pioneering Parkinson’s care: Ankita’s gait sense system

In a moment of immense pride for India and the hill town of Palampur, Ankita Raghuvanshi — a brilliant scholar and daughter of the region — has brought international recognition to the country through her pioneering research in science and health technology.

Ankita is currently pursuing her PhD in Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Gandhinagar, where her work focuses on innovative solutions in health tech. She recently represented India at the prestigious IEEE EMBC 2025 (Engineering in Medicine and Biology Conference) held in Copenhagen, Denmark.

At this globally acclaimed conference, Ankita presented her research paper titled “Smart Stride FoG”, featuring Gait Sense — a novel wearable system designed to detect Freezing of Gait (FoG), a disabling motor symptom commonly seen in Parkinson’s disease.

The Gait Sense system integrates sensor-equipped insoles and Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) to monitor stride-by-stride spatial and temporal gait parameters. This allows early identification of FoG episodes, which can pave the way for timely clinical interventions.

Ankita and her team tested the system on eight Parkinson’s patients and eight age-matched healthy individuals under dual-task walking conditions. The results revealed significantly higher spatial gait variability among the patients, showcasing the system’s potential as a predictive and diagnostic tool.

Previously, Ankita was also honoured with the prestigious Gandhian Young Technological Innovation (GYTI) Award for her project PRAGATI — an AI-driven wearable system to assist in Parkinson’s rehabilitation.

An alumna of the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Raipur, where she earned her BTech in Electronics and Communication Engineering, Ankita’s research interests include biomedical signal processing, gait analysis, assistive technologies and machine learning in healthcare.

Himachal Tribune