A Wearable System for Gait Training in Subjects with Parkinson’s Disease

Sensors

Filippo Casamassima²  Alberto Ferrari³  Bojan Milosevic²  Pieter Ginis¹  Elisabetta Farella² 

[1] Neuromotor Research Group, Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, KU Leuven, 3001 Leuven, Belgium; E-Mail:;Micrel Lab, DEI, University of Bologna, 40136 Bologna, Italy; E-Mails:;Biomedical Engineering Unit, DEI, University of Bologna, 40136 Bologna, Italy; E-Mails:

关键词: wearable;    body area networks;    motor disorders;    rehabilitation;    Parkinson’s disease;    audio-feedback;    gait analysis;   

DOI  :  10.3390/s140406229

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

In this paper, a system for gait training and rehabilitation for Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients in a daily life setting is presented. It is based on a wearable architecture aimed at the provision of real-time auditory feedback. Recent studies have, in fact, shown that PD patients can receive benefit from a motor therapy based on auditory cueing and feedback, as happens in traditional rehabilitation contexts with verbal instructions given by clinical operators. To this extent, a system based on a wireless body sensor network and a smartphone has been developed. The system enables real-time extraction of gait spatio-temporal features and their comparison with a patient’s reference walking parameters captured in the lab under clinical operator supervision. Feedback is returned to the user in form of vocal messages, encouraging the user to keep her/his walking behavior or to correct it. This paper describes the overall concept, the proposed usage scenario and the parameters estimated for the gait analysis. It also presents, in detail, the hardware-software architecture of the system and the evaluation of system reliability by testing it on a few subjects.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.