Application of hand grip signals for an objective evaluation of Parkinson disease: Analysis and comparison with standard functional clinical tests

Evaluation of Parkinson pathology is usually done with the use of ratings made with different motor functional scales. The trouble with this practice is that it is subjective, difficult and it often happens that the results of different tests clash between theirs. To overcome these limitations the authors propose the evaluation and the quantification of Parkinson disease by means of suitable biomedical parameters linked to the primary parkinsonian symptoms. Twelve biomedical quantities have been defined to describe the behavior of hand grip signal; these parameters have been analyzed with statistical methods and their statistical significance has been determined to attain differentiation between pathologic and healthy subjects. The test results highlight that only the parameters related to the dynamics of the analyzed signals (such as space-time and strength quantities) show very significant statistical difference and can be used to assess Parkinson pathology. Their use represents one attempt to take evaluation objective and very simple. Finally, a comparative analysis of the results obtained in our study and those achieved from standard functional disability tests has been carried out highlighting the more meaningful correlations. The comparative tests show meaningful correlations that confirm and validate the goodness of the proposed parameters