Distance estimation from acceleration for quantitative evaluation of Parkinson tremor

The purpose of this paper is to assess Parkinson tremor estimating actual distance amplitude. We propose a practical, useful and simple method for evaluating Parkinson tremor with distance value. We measured resting tremor of 7 Parkinson Disease (PD) patients with triaxial accelerometer. Resting tremor of participants was diagnosed by Unified Parkinson´s Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) by neurologist. First, we segmented acceleration signal during 7 seconds from recorded data. To estimate a displacement of tremor, we performed double integration from the acceleration. Prior to double integration, moving average method was used to reduce an error of integral constant. After estimation of displacement, we calculated tremor distance during 1s from segmented signal using Euclidean distance. We evaluated the distance values compared with UPDRS. Averaged moving distance during 1 second corresponding to UPDRS 1 was 11.52mm, that of UPDRS 2 was 33.58mm and tremor distance of UPDRS 3 was 382.22 mm. Estimated moving distance during 1s was proportional to clinical rating scale — UPDRS.