[Quantitative Evaluation of Regularity of Finger Tapping Movement for Patients with Parkinson’s disease]

Finger tapping test is a common testing item for patients with Parkinson’s disease(PD)in clinical neurology.It mainly evaluates the fine motor function of patient’s hand in three aspects:amplitude,speed and regularity of the movement.This paper focused on the quantitative assessment of regularity of finger tapping movement for PD patients.The movement signals of thumb and index finger were recorded by using inertial sensor unit in the process of tapping test.Two nonlinear dynamic indexes,approximate entropy(ApEn)and sample entropy(SampEn),were calculated,and then the values were statistically analyzed.The experimental results indicated that both indexes had significant differences between patient group and control group.Moreover,the indexes had relatively high correlation with the scores of corresponding unified Parkinson’s disease rating scale(UPDRS)item rated by clinical clinician,which illustrated that these two indexes could reflect the injury level of the repetitive finger movement.So,as a reliable method,it can be provided to the clinical evaluation of hand movement function for PD patients.