Feasibility of Smartphone-Based Gait Assessment for Parkinson’s Disease

Purpose There is currently no diagnostic test specific to Parkinson’s disease, which means that a positive diagnosis, assessments of severity, and evaluations of treatment efficacy rely heavily on evaluation scales. But obtaining scale data is time-consuming and limited in time and place. Gait is the core target in evaluation scales. Because of the inertia instrument has widely been used in healthcare institutes for gait assessment. Since the inertial device is as well embedded in every smartphone. Our objective was to explore the feasibility of using the ubiquitous smartphone to assist in the assessment of gait. Methods Twenty subjects were recruited in the clinical trial, which included a general gait analysis and detecting freezing of gait episodes. The gait analysis results obtained using the smartphone were compared with those obtained using an off-the-shelf inertia instrument, and the detecting freezing of gait episodes were compared with the evaluations of clinical professionals. Results The degree of consistency between the gait analysis results obtained using the smartphone and those obtained using the inertia instrument are ICC = 0.835, r = 0.858, and ρ = 0.846. In the detecting freezing of gait episodes, in comparing the detections by the clinical evaluators and the smartphone, the sensitivity is 90.6 ± 7.71% and specificity is 94.3 ± 8.36%. Conclusion The overall analyses revealed high degree of consistency between the two analysis schemes. The convenience of the ubiquitous smartphone has a great potential to enhance the frequency of gait assessment, thereby providing more data by which to assess treatment efficacy.