Toward Automated, At-Home Assessment of Mobility Among Patients With Parkinson Disease, Using a Body-Worn Accelerometer
By Weiss, Aner; Sharifi, Sarvi; Plotnik, Meir; van Vugt, Jeroen P.P.; Giladi, Nir; Hausdorff, Jeffrey M.; Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair, Volume 25, Number 9, pages 810-818Publication Date: November/December 2011
Study was undertaken to aid the development of an automated and objective method to assess mobility in Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients in daily life settings. The study also investigated whether accelerometer derived measures discriminate between PD and healthy controls as they walk and simulate activities of daily living (ADL). Participants were 17 healthy older adults and 22 patients with PD, aged 50 to 80 years. Participants wore the Mobi8 ambulatory monitoring system, a multichannel data logger connected to a three-dimensional acceleration sensor. The Mobi8 was worn during short walks for validation and during a walk around a medical center to simulate ADL. The variability of stepping, measured as consistency and rhythmicity, was assessed. Participants completed the walks before and after taking their anti-Parkinson medications. Frequency based acceleration measures of the main frequency of the power spectral density of the 0.5 to 3.0 hertz band included: (1) dominant frequency; (2) amplitude determined by strength of signal frequency; (3) width gauged via frequency dispersion: and (4) slope, a combination reflecting amplitude and width. A subset of the Unified Parkinson-Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS-Gait5) provided a clinical measure of gait impairment. A PD patient and control wore the sensors for 3 days at home. The width was larger, and the amplitude and slope were smaller in the PD patients compared to the controls in the validation study and ADL simulation. The width decreased, and the amplitude and slope increased, when patients took their medications. Significant correlations were observed between acceleration-derived measures and UPDRS-Gait5. Data obtained at home were similar to clinic data.
Published by: Sage Publications (Website:http://www.sagepub.com)
American Society of Neurorehabilitation (Web Site: http://www.asnr.com )
