Impact of Gender and Feature Set on Machine-Learning-Based Prediction of Lower-Limb Overuse Injuries Using a Single Trunk-Mounted Accelerometer

Even though practicing sports has great health benefits, it also entails a risk of developing overuse injuries, which can elicit a negative impact on physical, mental, and financial health. Being able to predict the risk of an overuse injury arising is of widespread interest because this may play a vital role in preventing its occurrence. In this paper, we present a machine learning model trained to predict the occurrence of a lower-limb overuse injury (LLOI). This model was trained and evaluated using data from a three-dimensional accelerometer on the lower back, collected during a Cooper test performed by 161 first-year undergraduate students of a movement science program. In this study, gender-specific models performed better than mixed-gender models. The estimated area under the receiving operating characteristic curve of the best-performing male- and female-specific models, trained according to the presented approach, was, respectively, 0.615 and 0.645. In addition, the best-performing models were achieved by combining statistical and sports-specific features. Overall, the results demonstrated that a machine learning injury prediction model is a promising, yet challenging approach.