Gait Based Vertical Ground Reaction Force Analysis for Parkinson’s Disease Diagnosis Using Self Organizing Map

The aim of this work is to use Self Organizing Map (SOM) for clustering of locomotion kinetic characteristics in normal and Parkinson’s disease. The classification and analysis of the kinematic characteristics of human locomotion has been greatly increased by the use of artificial neural networks in recent years. The proposed methodology aims at overcoming the constraints of traditional analysis methods and to find new clinical ways for observing the large amount of information obtained in a gait lab. Self organizing maps (SOM) also called Kohonen maps are a special kind of neural networks that can be used for clustering tasks. The results are shown in the terms of sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, error rate from the two groups of features which are the Mean Coefficient of Variation and Mean Sum of Variation and Mean Max and Mean Standard deviation of the Ground Reaction Force. Results showing the potential of this technique for distinguishing between population of individuals with normal gait and with gait disorders of different causes of disease