A practical method for the detection of freezing of gait in patients with Parkinson’s disease

  • Yuri Kwon
  • , Sang Hoon Park
  • , Ji Won Kim
  • , Yeji Ho
  • , Hyeong Min Jeon
  • , Min Jung Bang
  • , Gu In Jung
  • , Seon Min Lee
  • , Gwang Moon Eom*
  • , Seong Beom Koh
  • , Jeong Whan Lee
  • , Heung Seok Jeon
  • *Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

31 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Purpose: Freezing of gait (FOG), increasing the fall risk and limiting the quality of life, is common at the advanced stage of Parkinson’s disease, typically in old ages. A simple and unobtrusive FOG detection system with a small calculation load would make a fast presentation of on-demand cueing possible. The purpose of this study was to find a practical FOG detection system.

Patients and methods: A sole-mounted sensor system was developed for an unobtrusive measurement of acceleration during gait. Twenty patients with Parkinson’s disease participated in this study. A simple and fast time-domain method for the FOG detection was suggested and compared with the conventional frequency-domain method. The parameters used in the FOG detection were optimized for each patient.

Results: The calculation load was 1,154 times less in the time-domain method than the conventional method, and the FOG detection performance was comparable between the two domains (P=0.79) and depended on the window length (P<0.01) and dimension of sensor information (P=0.03).

Conclusion: A minimally constraining sole-mounted sensor system was developed, and the suggested time-domain method showed comparable FOG detection performance to that of the conventional frequency-domain method. Three-dimensional sensor information and 3-4-second window length were desirable. The suggested system is expected to have more practical clinical applications.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1709-1719
Number of pages11
JournalClinical Interventions in Aging
Volume9
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2014 Oct 8
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 Kwon et al.

Keywords

  • Acceleration
  • Detection system
  • Freezing of gait
  • Frequency-domain
  • Parkinson’s disease
  • Time-domain

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Geriatrics and Gerontology

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