Capturing whole-body mobility of patients with Parkinson disease using inertial motion sensors: Expected challenges and rewards

While many studies have reported on the use of kinematic analysis on well-controlled, in-laboratory mobility tasks, few studies have examined the challenges of recording dynamic mobility in home environments. This preliminary study evaluated whole body mobility in eleven patients with Parkinson disease (H&Y 2-4). Patients were recorded in their home environment during scripted and non-scripted mobility tasks while wearing a full-body kinematic recording system using 11 inertial motion sensors (IMU). Data were analyzed with principal component analysis (PCA) in order to identify kinematic variables which best represent mobility tasks. Results indicate that there was a large degree of variability within subjects for each task, across tasks for individual subjects, and between scripted and non-scripted tasks. This study underscores the potential benefit of whole body multi-sensor kinematic recordings in understanding the variability in task performance across patients during daily activity which may have a significant impact on rehabilitation assessment and intervention.