Long-term monitoring of gait in Parkinson's disease
Abstract
A new system for long-term monitoring of gait in Parkinson's disease (PD) has been developed and validated. The characteristics of every stride taken over 10-h epochs were acquired using a lightweight ankle-mounted sensor array that transmitted data wirelessly to a small pocket PC at a rate of 100
Hz. Stride was calculated from the vertical linear acceleration and pitch angular velocity of the leg with an accuracy of 5
cm. Results from PD patients (5) demonstrate the effectiveness of long-term monitoring of gait in a natural environment. The small, variable stride length characteristic of Parkinsonian gait, and fluctuations of efficacy associated with levodopa therapy, such as delayed onset, wearing off, and the ‘off/on’ effect, could reliably be detected from long-term changes in stride length.
Keywords: Stride length, Levodopa, Parkinsonian, Locomotion, Accelerometer
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PII: S0966-6362(06)00190-1
doi:10.1016/j.gaitpost.2006.09.011
© 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
