Monitoring Gait System to Patients with Parkinson’s Disease

Abstract

Gait is a functional task that requires coordination between the major articulations of the body, especially the lower extremity of the human body. The analysis of this activity allows the measurement and evaluation of gait biomechanics, which facilitates the identification of abnormal features and the recommendation of alternative treatments. Parkinson disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disease, directly resulted from dysfunctions in basal nuclei, located in the brain, and with impact in the automatic motricity control. The use of accelerometers to analyze human gait has grown and set them in various parts of the body can help to identify the phases of the human gait cycle. The main objective of this work was to develop an accelerometry system for gait monitoring in people with Parkinson’s disease. We used an equipment developed by the authors to acquire the signal and the data was sent using the Bluetooth protocol for a modular software platform developed for this purpose. Four tri-axial accelerometers were implemented, which also perform the gyroscope function. The data collected correspond to the same patient performing the 10 m distance in three times. The equipment showed robustly in acquiring and exporting the data. Calculations of variables were possible through the use of Matlab^® software. After the data analysis, it was possible to map the stance and swing phases, besides calculating important parameters such as average speed, distance travelled, width and height step.