Spine Research Institute, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.
Department of Integrated Systems Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.
Sensors (Basel). 2023 Jan 28;23(3):1448. doi: 10.3390/s23031448.
Neck pain is a common cause of disability worldwide. Lack of objective tools to quantify an individual's functional disability results in the widespread use of subjective assessments to measure the limitations in spine function and the response to interventions. This study assessed the reliability of the quantifying neck function using a wearable cervical motion tracking system. Three novice raters recorded the neck motion assessments on 20 volunteers using the device. Kinematic features from the signals in all three anatomical planes were extracted and used as inputs to repeated measures and mixed-effects regression models to calculate the intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs). Cervical spine-specific kinematic features indicated good and excellent inter-rater and intra-rater reliability for the most part. For intra-rater reliability, the ICC values varied from 0.85 to 0.95, and for inter-rater reliability, they ranged from 0.7 to 0.89. Overall, velocity measures proved to be more reliable compared to other kinematic features. This technique is a trustworthy tool for evaluating neck function objectively. This study showed the potential for cervical spine-specific kinematic measurements to deliver repeatable and reliable metrics to evaluate clinical performance at any time points.
颈部疼痛是全球范围内导致残疾的常见原因。由于缺乏客观工具来量化个体的功能障碍，因此广泛使用主观评估来衡量脊柱功能的受限程度和干预措施的效果。本研究评估了使用可穿戴式颈椎运动跟踪系统量化颈部功能的可靠性。三位新手评估员使用该设备对 20 名志愿者的颈部运动进行了评估。从所有三个解剖平面的信号中提取运动学特征，并将其用作输入，以进行重复测量和混合效应回归模型，以计算组内相关系数（ICC）。颈椎运动学特征大部分显示出良好和优秀的评估者间和评估者内可靠性。对于评估者内可靠性，ICC 值范围为 0.85 至 0.95，而对于评估者间可靠性，ICC 值范围为 0.7 至 0.89。总体而言，与其他运动学特征相比，速度测量值更可靠。该技术是客观评估颈部功能的可靠工具。本研究表明，颈椎运动学测量具有潜力，可以提供可重复和可靠的指标，以评估任何时间点的临床表现。
