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- Title
A Validated Smartphone-Based Assessment of Gait and Gait Variability in Parkinson’s Disease.
- Authors
Ellis, Robert J.; Ng, Yee Sien; Zhu, Shenggao; Tan, Dawn M.; Anderson, Boyd; Schlaug, Gottfried; Wang, Ye
- Abstract
Background: A well-established connection exists between increased gait variability and greater fall likelihood in Parkinson’s disease (PD); however, a portable, validated means of quantifying gait variability (and testing the efficacy of any intervention) remains lacking. Furthermore, although rhythmic auditory cueing continues to receive attention as a promising gait therapy for PD, its widespread delivery remains bottlenecked. The present paper describes a smartphone-based mobile application (“SmartMOVE”) to address both needs. Methods: The accuracy of smartphone-based gait analysis (utilizing the smartphone’s built-in tri-axial accelerometer and gyroscope to calculate successive step times and step lengths) was validated against two heel contact–based measurement devices: heel-mounted footswitch sensors (to capture step times) and an instrumented pressure sensor mat (to capture step lengths). 12 PD patients and 12 age-matched healthy controls walked along a 26-m path during self-paced and metronome-cued conditions, with all three devices recording simultaneously. Results: Four outcome measures of gait and gait variability were calculated. Mixed-factorial analysis of variance revealed several instances in which between-group differences (e.g., increased gait variability in PD patients relative to healthy controls) yielded medium-to-large effect sizes (eta-squared values), and cueing-mediated changes (e.g., decreased gait variability when PD patients walked with auditory cues) yielded small-to-medium effect sizes—while at the same time, device-related measurement error yielded small-to-negligible effect sizes. Conclusion: These findings highlight specific opportunities for smartphone-based gait analysis to serve as an alternative to conventional gait analysis methods (e.g., footswitch systems or sensor-embedded walkways), particularly when those methods are cost-prohibitive, cumbersome, or inconvenient.
- Subjects
PARKINSON'S disease treatment; GAIT disorders; SMARTPHONES; ACCELEROMETRY; MOBILE apps; TELEPROMPTERS
- Publication
PLoS ONE, 2015, Vol 10, Issue 10, p1
- ISSN
1932-6203
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0141694