A low-cost quantitative continuous measurement of movements in the extremities of people with Parkinson's disease

The assessment of Parkinson’s disease currently relies on the history of the present illness, the clinical interview, the physical examination, and structured instruments. Drawbacks to the use of clinical ratings include the reliance on real-time human vision to quantify small differences in motion and significant inter-rater variability due to inherent subjectivity in scoring the procedures. Rating tools are semi-quantitative by design, however, in addition to significant inter-rater variability, there is inherent subjectivity in administering these tools, which are not blinded in clinical settings. Sophisticated systems to quantify movements are too costly to be used by some providers with limited resources. A simple procedure is described to obtain continuous quantitative measurements of movements of people with Parkinson’s disease for objective analysis and correlation with visual observation of the movements. • Inexpensive accelerometers are attached to the upper and lower extremities of patients with Parkinson’s disease and related conditions to generate a continuous, three-dimensional recorded representation of movements occurring while performing tasks to characterize the deficits of Parkinson’s disease. • Movements of the procedure are rated by trained examiners live in real-time and later by videotapes. • The output of the instrumentation can be conveyed to experts for interpretation for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes.