Comparison of movement of rapid alternating movements of hands in idiopathic parkinson's disease patients and normal subjects using angular velocity measurement system

The purpose of this study was to analyze bradykinesia of forearm movement in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) as compared to those of normal subjects. A gyrosensor was selected for the measurement of forearm movement, because it can provide angular velocity signal which is free from the gravitational artifact and also because it can be conveniently used during clinical test of bradykinesia. Forty PD patients (age: 65.7 ± 11.1 yrs, H&Y stage:2.3 ± 0.5), 14 age-matched elderly subjects (65±3.9 yrs) and 17 healthy young subjects (24±2.1 yrs) participated in this study. Angular velocity during forearm movement of pronation/supination was measured in both arms. Suggested quantitative measures of bradykinesia were root-mean-squared (RMS) angular velocity, RMS angle, peak power and total power which were derived from the angular velocity. ANOVA showed that all measures were significantly different among three groups (p<0.001). Subsequent post-hoc test revealed that all measures in PD patients were significantly smaller than in healthy elderly and healthy young subjects (p<0.05). This results suggest that PD patients can be differentiated from normal subjects using suggested measures.