Networked Sensing and Control Lab, School of Engineering, Deakin University, Waurn Ponds, VIC 3216, Australia.
Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, Parkville, VIC 3052, Australia.
Sensors (Basel). 2018 Aug 24;18(9):2791. doi: 10.3390/s18092791.
Cerebellar Ataxia (CA) leads to deficiencies in muscle movement and lack of coordination that is often manifested as gait and balance disabilities. Conventional CA clinical assessments are subjective, cumbersome and provide less insight into the functional capabilities of patients. This cross-sectional study investigates the use of wearable inertial sensors strategically positioned on the front-chest and upper-back locations during the Romberg and Trunk tests for objective assessment of human postural balance due to CA. The primary aim of this paper is to quantify the performance of postural stability of 34 patients diagnosed with CA and 22 healthy subjects as controls. Several forms of entropy descriptions were considered to uncover characteristics of movements intrinsic to CA. Indeed, correlation with clinical observation is vital in ascertaining the validity of the inertial measurements in addition to capturing unique features of movements not typically observed by the practicing clinician. Both of these aspects form an integral part of the underlying objective assessment scheme. Uncertainty in the velocity contained a significant level of information with respect to truncal instability and, based on an extensive clustering and discrimination analysis, fuzzy entropy was identified as an effective measure in characterising the underlying disability. Front-chest measurements demonstrated a strong correlation with clinical assessments while the upper-back measurements performed better in classifying the two cohorts, inferring that the standard clinical assessments are relatively influenced by the frontal observations. The Romberg test was confirmed to be an effective test of neurological diagnosis as well as a potential candidate for objective assessment resulting in a significant correlation with the clinical assessments. In contrast, the Trunk test is observed to be relatively less informative.
小脑性共济失调（CA）导致肌肉运动缺陷和协调不足，通常表现为步态和平衡障碍。传统的 CA 临床评估方法具有主观性、繁琐性，并且对患者的功能能力提供的了解较少。本横断面研究探讨了在 Romberg 和躯干测试中使用战略性地放置在前胸和上背部位置的可穿戴惯性传感器，以对 CA 引起的人体姿势平衡进行客观评估。本文的主要目的是定量评估 34 名确诊为 CA 的患者和 22 名健康对照者的姿势稳定性。考虑了几种熵描述形式，以揭示 CA 内在运动特征。实际上，除了捕捉到临床医生通常观察不到的运动的独特特征之外，与临床观察的相关性对于确定惯性测量的有效性至关重要。这两个方面都是基础客观评估方案的一个组成部分。速度的不确定性包含与躯干不稳定有关的重要信息，并且基于广泛的聚类和判别分析，模糊熵被确定为一种有效的特征描述残疾的度量。前胸测量与临床评估具有很强的相关性，而上背部测量在对两个队列进行分类方面表现更好，这表明标准的临床评估相对受到前观察的影响。Romberg 测试被证实是一种有效的神经诊断测试，也是客观评估的潜在候选方法，与临床评估具有显著相关性。相比之下，躯干测试被观察到信息量相对较少。
