A wearable system to assist walking of Parkinson s disease patients
Published: March 2010
Approximately 50% of patients with advanced Parkinson’s disease (PD) suffer from freezing of gait (FOG) – a sudden and transient inability to walk. It often causes falls, interferes with daily activities and significantly impairs quality of life.
Gait deficits in PD patients are often resistant to pharmacologic treatment; effective non-pharmacologic treatments are thus of special interest. The study evaluates the concept of a wearable device that can obtain real-time gait data, process the data, and provide assistance.
The authors developed a real-time wearable FOG detection system that automatically provides a cueing sound when FOG is detected, with the sound remaining until the subject resumes walking. They evaluated the wearable assistive technology in a study with ten PD patients. Over 8 hours of data was recorded, and a questionnaire was filled out by each patient.
The device detected FOG events with a sensitivity of 73.1% and a specificity of 81.6%. The authors present and discuss the patients’ and physiotherapists’ perspectives on the wearability and performance of the device, the patients’gait performance when using the assistant, and point out the next research steps. The results demonstrate the benefit of such a context-aware system and further studies should follow.
To view abstract click here
