Smartphone-Based Estimation of Item 3.8 of the MDS-UPDRS-III for Assessing Leg Agility in People With Parkinson's Disease

• Main Authors: Luigi Borzi, Marilena Varrecchia, Stefano Sibille, Gabriella Olmo, Carlo Alberto Artusi, Margherita Fabbri, Mario Giorgio Rizzone, Alberto Romagnolo, Maurizio Zibetti, Leonardo Lopiano
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 2020-01-01
• Series: IEEE Open Journal of Engineering in Medicine and Biology
• Subjects: Artificial neural networks; bradykinesia; leg agility; parkinson's disease; smartphone
• Online Access: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9090332/

Goal: In this paper we investigated the use of smartphone sensors and Artificial Intelligence techniques for the automatic quantification of the MDS-UPDRS-Part III Leg Agility (LA) task, representative of lower limb bradykinesia. Methods: We collected inertial data from 93 PD subjects. Four expert neurologists provided clinical evaluations. We employed a novel Artificial Neural Network approach in order to get a continuous output, going beyond the MDS-UPDRS score discretization. Results: We found a Pearson correlation of 0.92 between algorithm output and average clinical score, compared to an inter-rater agreement index of 0.88. Furthermore, the classification error was less than 0.5 scale point in about 80% cases. Conclusions: We proposed an objective and reliable tool for the automatic quantification of the MDS-UPDRS Leg Agility task. In perspective, this tool is part of a larger monitoring program to be carried out during activities of daily living, and managed by the patients themselves.