Data quality evaluation in wearable monitoring

Abstract

Wearable recordings of neurophysiological signals captured from the wrist offer enormous potential for seizure monitoring. Yet, data quality remains one of the most challenging factors that impact data reliability. We suggest a combined data quality assessment tool for the evaluation of multimodal wearable data. We analyzed data from patients with epilepsy from four epilepsy centers. Patients wore wristbands recording accelerometry, electrodermal activity, blood volume pulse, and skin temperature. We calculated data completeness and assessed the time the device was worn (on-body), and modality-specific signal quality scores. We included 37,166 h from 632 patients in the inpatient and 90,776 h from 39 patients in the outpatient setting. All modalities were affected by artifacts. Data loss was higher when using data streaming (up to 49% among inpatient cohorts, averaged across respective recordings) as compared to onboard device recording and storage (up to 9%). On-body scores, estimating the percentage of time a device was worn on the body, were consistently high across cohorts (more than 80%). Signal quality of some modalities, based on established indices, was higher at night than during the day. A uniformly reported data quality and multimodal signal quality index is feasible, makes study results more comparable, and contributes to the development of devices and evaluation routines necessary for seizure monitoring.

Quantifying and controlling the impact of regression to the mean on randomized controlled trials in epilepsy

“…Because this would be highly subject dependent, it is unclear whether there is a general pattern that can be guaranteed in this regard, but it is an important psychological effect that was not accounted for in the present study. Some observers believe that the use of wearables or implanted seizure detectors 38 may allow for more accurate measurement of long‐term seizure rates, although such ideas would present considerable technical, 39 financial, and psychological 40 challenges.…”

“…that the use of wearables or implanted seizure detectors 38 may allow for more accurate measurement of long-term seizure rates, although such ideas would present considerable technical, 39 financial, and psychological 40 challenges.…”

Patients with chronic cluster headache may show reduced activity energy expenditure on ambulatory wrist actigraphy recordings during daytime attacks

“…Second, our study design utilized streaming data, potentially resulting in fewer headaches fulfilling the headache data ratio requirement due to missing data. Böttcher et al (2022) observed that using the Empatica E4 in a non-streaming mode generally yields a higher data ratio, but streaming results in a lower user burden as patients do not have to manually download the data from the device and send it to…”

Neuroscience meets behavior: a systematic literature review on Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the brain combined with real-world digital phenotyping

“…Signal artifacts and noise in PAD data pose another substantial challenge, as factors such as motion artifacts, variable environmental conditions, battery life, user engagement, or electronic interference can affect data quality (Böttcher et al, 2022;Onnela, 2021). PAD accuracy and reliability is still a concern, especially since issues like data missingness or quality are not comprehensively reported in current MRI-PAD studies.…”