Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a degenerative disease of the central nervous system. Disturbed gait is one of 3 features of PD. Therefore, it is widely to study Parkinson's foot pressure. Previous studies have focused on pressure distribution, but the gait signal research is little.
OBJECTIVE: To find the difference of gait signal between PD patients and normal people.
METHODS: Foot data of 93 PD patients and 72 normal controls were collected. Subjects walked for about 2 minutes as normal on the horizontal ground. The counteracting force on the foot sole from vertical direction was recorded. Sixteen transducers on the foot sole were used to record at 100 times/s. The data included the sum of 8 transducers on the foot sole. Sampling speed was 100 Hz. The sampling time of each subject was 121.1715 s. Gait data of PD patients and controls were analyzed using wavelet packet decomposition algorithm.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Entropy of signal of different transducers from foot sole was obtained by decomposition and calculation. D1 layer entropy value showed that P value from transducers L1, R1, L2, R2, L6 and R6 signal was significantly less than other transducers, and less than 0.05. DD2 layer entropy value showed that P value from transducers L1, R1, L6 and R6 signal was significantly less than other transducers, and less than 0.05. Statistical results demonstrated that there are significant differences in signal entropy value in foot sole between PD patients and normal controls. Foot sole pressure signal analysis can help physician diagnosis and PD treatment.