Abstract
This study aims to develop a practical algorithm which can detect freezing of gait(FOG) in patients with Parkinson's disease(PD). Eighteen PD patients($68.8{\pm}11.1yrs.$) participated in this study, and three($68.7{\pm}4.0yrs.$) of them showed FOG. We suggested two time-domain algorithms(with 1-axis or 3-axes acceleration signals) and compared them with the frequency-domain algorithm in the literature. We measured the acceleration of left foot with a 3-axis accelerometer inserted at the insole of a shoe. In the time-domain method, the root-mean-square(RMS) acceleration was calculated in a moving window of 4s and FOG was defined as the periods during which RMS accelerations located within FOG range. The parameters in each algorithm were optimized for each subject using the simulated annealing method. The sensitivity and specificity were same, i.e., $89{\pm}8%$ for the time-domain method with 1-axis acceleration and were $91{\pm}7%$ and $90{\pm}8%$ for the time-domain method with 3-axes acceleration, respectively. Both performances were better in the time-domain methods than in the frequency-domain method although the results were statistically insignificant. The amount of calculation in the time-domain method was much smaller than in the frequency-domain method. Therefore it is expected that the suggested time domain algorithm would be advantageous in the systematic implementation of FOG detection.
