On-Shoe Wearable Sensors for Gait and Turning Assessment of Patients With Parkinson's Disease

• Published in: IEEE transactions on biomedical engineering 2013-01, Vol.60 (1), p.155-158
• Main Authors: Mariani, Benoit, Jiménez, Mayté Castro, Vingerhoets, François J. G., Aminian, Kamiar
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aged; Algorithms; Foot; Gait - physiology; Gait analysis; Humans; inertial sensors; Legged locomotion; Middle Aged; Monitoring, Ambulatory - instrumentation; Monitoring, Ambulatory - methods; Parkinson; Parkinson Disease - physiopathology; Parkinson's disease; Reproducibility of Results; Shoes; Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; spatio-temporal parameters; System-on-a-chip; timed up and go; Turning; Walking - physiology; Wearable sensors
• ISSN: 0018-9294; 1558-2531
• DOI: 10.1109/TBME.2012.2227317

Assessment of locomotion through simple tests such as timed up and go (TUG) or walking trials can provide valuable information for the evaluation of treatment and the early diagnosis of people with Parkinson's disease (PD). Common methods used in clinics are either based on complex motion laboratory settings or simple timing outcomes using stop watches. The goal of this paper is to present an innovative technology based on wearable sensors on-shoe and processing algorithm, which provides outcome measures characterizing PD motor symptoms during TUG and gait tests. Our results on ten PD patients and ten age-matched elderly subjects indicate an accuracy ± precision of 2.8 ± 2.4 cm/s and 1.3 ± 3.0 cm for stride velocity and stride length estimation compared to optical motion capture, with the advantage of being practical to use in home or clinics without any discomfort for the subject. In addition, the use of novel spatio-temporal parameters, including turning, swing width, path length, and their intercycle variability, was also validated and showed interesting tendencies for discriminating patients in ON and OFF states and control subjects.