Smartphone-based evaluation of postural stability in Parkinson’s disease patients during quiet stance

Abstract

Background: Postural instability is one of the most troublesome motor symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease (PD). It impairs patients’ quality of life and results in high risk of falls. The aim of this study is to provide a reliable tool for the automated assessment of postural instability. Methods: Data acquisition was performed on 42 PD patients and 7 young healthy subjects. They were asked to keep a quiet stance position for at least 30 s while wearing a waist-mounted smartphone. A total number of 414 features was extracted from both time and frequency domain, selected based on Pearson’s correlation, and fed to an optimized Support Vector Machine. Results: The implemented model was able to differentiate patients with mild postural instability from those with severe postural instability and from healthy controls, with 100% accuracy. Conclusion: This study demonstrated the feasibility of using inertial sensors embedded in commercial smartphones and proposed a simple protocol for accurate postural instability scoring. This tool can be used for early detection of PD motor signs, disease follow-up and fall prevention.