Investigating Subjective Motor Activity Perception and Gait in Parkinson‘s Disease

Syrine Slim, Arne Küderle, Hamid Moradi, Mehul Mittal, Emmanuelle Salin, Jürgen Winkler, Bjoern Eskofier

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Keywords: Subjective motor activity perception, Objective gait measurements, IMU, free-living monitoring, micro gait parameters, Stride count, Parkinson's disease, patient-centered care

TL;DR: This study shows that subjective daily motor activity reports from Parkinson’s patients align with objective gait changes, captured via foot-worn IMUs, highlighting their potential for long-term, patient-centered monitoring.

Abstract:

Understanding the relationship between patient-reported symptom perception and objective measurements of gait in Parkinson's Disease (PD) can support and inform clinical decision-making. Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) facilitate the measurement of objective gait parameters in free-living conditions and allow for longitudinal monitoring.
In this work, 15 stride-level gait parameters and stride count, derived from foot-worn IMUs, were statistically evaluated in their relation to subjective patient perception of daily motor-activity levels. This study covered a duration of 186 $\pm$ 5.5 days in free-living conditions for 33 PD patients.
The comparison between the perceived low and high motor activity levels showed maintained significance after Bonferroni correction and medium to large effect sizes \hl{(ranging between 1.24 and 0.4)} for the median over the recording period of stride count, turning angle, gait speed, stride length, gait clearance parameters (max. foot clearance, max. sensor lift, and max toe clearance).
The effect sizes decreased when comparing neighboring motor activity levels, and the parameters showed a gradual improvement with higher activity levels.
The results of this work show that daily subjective reports of motor activity mirror gait changes both in stride count and microparameters in PD patients as detected through foot-worn IMUs.
This study provides groundwork for connecting subjective patient-reported feedback and free-living gait evaluations on the macro- (stride count), and micro-parameter level, as a first step towards including Patient Related Outcomes (PROs) within digital health systems for PD monitoring.

Track: 1. Biomedical Sensor Informatics

Registration Id: XGNGZJYYLVV

Submission Number: 76