Administering Movement Assessments via Markerless Motion Capture Provides New Normative Values Over Clinical Tests

Abstract

Background: Advances in markerless motion capture (MMC) provide an opportunity to improve clinical assessments of neuromuscular health. Conventional tests are generally subjective and/or coarse, making it difficult to identify subtle deficits and track progress. As part of a larger project, we leveraged MMC to create a quantitative motor assessment informed by several commonly used evaluations. The purpose of this researchwas to 1) seed a normative database for the MMC-mediated assessment and 2) tocompare modified test results to analogous conventional tests. Methods: The modified assessment consisted of five tests: finger oscillation, tremor, visually guided movement, reaction time, and balance. We administered it to 132 healthy individuals (64 females) between 18 and 50 years old. Results: Descriptive statistics for measures on the MMC-mediated movement assessment from a healthy population are presented. Correlations between the modified and conventional tests were weak but followed similar trends, namely finger oscillation results depended on age and sex; reaction and movement time slowed with age; and balance sway was greatest on a soft surface with eyes closed. Conclusions: A user-friendly, inexpensive, quantitative motor assessment is feasible with MMC; however, a new set of normative values is required for MMC-mediated tests.