Ambulatory monitoring of freezing of gait in Parkinson's disease

A simple method to assess freezing of gait in Parkinson's disease patients

“…FOG is not necessarily a completely frozen, akinetic posture. Thus, during locomotion, different characteristics of gait disturbances may be seen: feet may be "glued" to the ground (freezing) or they may change their normal rhythm (festination) (7,(9)(10)(11). Much faster oscillations than the normal walking pattern may occur as the result of an ineffective effort to move forward.…”

“…Ambulatory monitoring may improve the clinical management of FOG (11)(12)(13). A reliable and easy method to study the frequency, timing, and intensity of FOG might be used in clinical trials of new drugs or as a tool to study PD patients submitted to deep brain stimulation surgery with electrode implantation.…”

“…Gait with freezing episodes may be monitored by using different measurement systems: video (5,11), insole forces (14), and accelerometers (11)(12)(13). The majority of gait analysis systems provide information about the force profile exerted by each foot on the ground during walking.…”

“…The majority of gait analysis systems provide information about the force profile exerted by each foot on the ground during walking. In addition to time, frequency analysis was also evaluated (4,11).…”

A Method to Assess Hand Motor Blocks in Parkinson's Disease with Digitizing Tablet

“…Various methods of measuring the classical symptoms of PD in an objective and quantitative way have been proposed (Ghika et al 1993;Jobbagy et al 1998), specifically for tapping test (Ziv et al 1999;Yahalom et al 2004), the quantification of rigidity (Patrick et al 2001), handwriting (Eichhorn et al 1996), to evaluate FOG (Han et al 2003;Moore et al 2008), or to assess MBs in hand movements (Popovic et al 2002). Ghika et al (1993) designed portable system based upon a PC to measure tremor, bradikinezia, and muscle tone.…”