Validation of Freezing-of-Gait Monitoring Using Smartphone

Freezing of gait (FOG) is a commonly observed motor symptom for patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). The symptoms of FOG include reduced step lengths or motor blocks, even with an evident intention of walking. FOG should be monitored carefully because it not only lowers the patient's quality of life, but also significantly increases the risk of injury.

In previous studies, patients had to wear several sensors on the body and another computing device was needed to run the FOG detection algorithm. Moreover, the features used in the algorithm were based on low-level and hand-crafted features. In this study, we propose a FOG detection system based on a smartphone, which can be placed in the patient's daily wear, with a novel convolutional neural network (CNN).

The walking data of 32 PD patients were collected from the accelerometer and gyroscope embedded in the smartphone, located in the trouser pocket. The motion signals measured by the sensors were converted into the frequency domain and stacked into a 2D image for the CNN input. A specialized CNN model for FOG detection was determined through a validation process.

We compared our performances with the results acquired by the previously reported settings. The proposed architecture discriminated the freezing events from the normal activities with an average sensitivity of 93.8% and a specificity of 90.1%.

Using our methodology, the precise and continuous monitoring of freezing events with unconstrained sensing can assist patients in managing their chronic disease in daily life effectively.