The role of wrist-mounted inertial sensors in detecting gait freeze episodes in Parkinson's disease

Freezing of gait (FoG) is a motor impairment among patients with advanced Parkinson's disease, associated with falls and negative impact on patient's quality of life. Detecting such freezes allows real-time gait monitoring to reduce the risk of falls. We investigate the correlation between wrist movements and the freezing of the gait in Parkinson's disease, targeting FoG-detection from wrist-worn sensing data. While most of research focuses on placing inertial sensors on lower limb, i.e., foot, ankle, thigh, we focus on the wrist as an alternative placement. Commonly worn accessories at the wrist such as watches or wristbands are more likely to be accepted and easier to be worn by elderly users, especially subjects with motor problems. Experiments on data from 11 subjects with Parkinson's disease and FoG show there are specific features from wrist movements which are related to gait freeze, such the power on different frequency ranges and statistical information from acceleration and rotation data. Moreover, FoG can be detected by using wrist motion and machine learning models with a FoG hit rate of 0.9, and a specificity between 0.66 and 0.8. Compared with the state-of-the-art lower limb information used to detect FoG, the wrist increases the number of false detected events, while preserving the FoG hit-rate and detection latency. This suggests that wrist sensors can be a feasible alternative to the cumbersome placement on the legs.