IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 2022 Dec;69(12):3591-3600. doi: 10.1109/TBME.2022.3172725. Epub 2022 Nov 21.
Current inertial-based models were mostly limited to gait assessment of straight walking, which may not be efficient for detecting subtle gait disorders at an early stage of Parkinson's disease (PD). As PD patients exhibit more severe gait impairments during turns even before the appearance of gait disorders, gait characteristics during turning can provide promise in the identification of early-stage PD.
We proposed a novel spatiotemporal gait model using inertial measurement units that can assess gait performance in both straight walking and turning. Ten healthy young, ten healthy elderly subjects and ten early-stage PD patients were enrolled in the validation experiment. All participants performed a 7-meter walk test consisting of a straight walking path and turns at a self-selected speed. Spatiotemporal gait parameters from the proposed model were compared with the Vicon motion capture system.
A strong correlation of all spatiotemporal parameters (Pearson's R between 0.82 ∼ 0.99) between the inertial-based model and the reference was observed. Most measurement differences were within the mean ±1.96 standard deviation lines. The absolute bias was below 6.21 ms for all temporal gait parameters, 2.19 cm for stride length and 0.02 m/s for walking speed. We show that the proposed model does not only achieve a highly accurate and reliable spatiotemporal gait measurement but also enable the detection of significantly decreased stride length and reduced walking speed in early-stage PD patients at turns compared to the control groups.
Our model offers a potential approach for early-stage PD detection.
目前基于惯性的模型大多局限于直走步态评估，对于检测帕金森病（PD）早期的细微步态障碍可能效率不高。由于 PD 患者在出现步态障碍之前甚至在转弯时就已经表现出更严重的步态障碍，因此转弯时的步态特征可能有助于早期 PD 的识别。
我们提出了一种新的基于惯性测量单元的时空步态模型，可评估直走和转弯时的步态表现。10 名健康年轻、10 名健康老年和 10 名早期 PD 患者参加了验证实验。所有参与者都进行了 7 米步行测试，包括直走路径和自选速度转弯。将提出的模型的时空步态参数与 Vicon 运动捕捉系统进行比较。
观察到惯性模型和参考模型之间所有时空参数的高度相关性（皮尔逊 R 值在 0.82 到 0.99 之间）。大多数测量差异都在均值 ±1.96 标准差线内。所有时间步态参数的绝对偏差均低于 6.21 毫秒，步长为 2.19 厘米，行走速度为 0.02 米/秒。我们表明，该模型不仅实现了高度准确和可靠的时空步态测量，而且还能够检测到早期 PD 患者在转弯时与对照组相比步长明显缩短和行走速度降低。
我们的模型为早期 PD 检测提供了一种潜在的方法。
