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. 2022 May 4:13:726677.
doi: 10.3389/fphys.2022.726677. eCollection 2022.

Foot Trajectory Features in Gait of Parkinson's Disease Patients

Taiki Ogata  1 , Hironori Hashiguchi  2 , Koyu Hori  2 , Yuki Hirobe  1 , Yumi Ono  1 , Hiroyuki Sawada  3 , Akira Inaba  3 , Satoshi Orimo  3 , Yoshihiro Miyake  1
Affiliations

Foot Trajectory Features in Gait of Parkinson's Disease Patients

Taiki Ogata et al. Front Physiol. .

Abstract

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a progressive neurological disorder characterized by movement disorders, such as gait instability. This study investigated whether certain spatial features of foot trajectory are characteristic of patients with PD. The foot trajectory of patients with mild and advanced PD in on-state and healthy older and young individuals was estimated from acceleration and angular velocity measured by inertial measurement units placed on the subject's shanks, just above the ankles. We selected six spatial variables in the foot trajectory: forward and vertical displacements from heel strike to toe-off, maximum clearance, and change in supporting leg (F1 to F3 and V1 to V3, respectively). Healthy young individuals had the greatest F2 and F3 values, followed by healthy older individuals, and then mild PD patients. Conversely, the vertical displacements of mild PD patients were larger than the healthy older individuals. Still, those of healthy older individuals were smaller than the healthy young individuals except for V3. All six displacements of the advanced PD patients were smaller than the mild PD patients. To investigate features in foot trajectories in detail, a principal components analysis and soft-margin kernel support vector machine was used in machine learning. The accuracy in distinguishing between mild PD patients and healthy older individuals and between mild and advanced PD patients was 96.3 and 84.2%, respectively. The vertical and forward displacements in the foot trajectory was the main contributor. These results reveal that large vertical displacements and small forward ones characterize mild and advanced PD patients, respectively.

Keywords: Parkinson’s disease; foot trajectory; forward displacement; gait; inertial measurement unit; vertical displacement.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
(A) The experiment task. Participants walked and turned in a straight corridor, giving over 60 strides. (B) The IMU and a belt to attach the IMU on the shank. (C) The belt with the IMU around the shank.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Foot trajectory and six spatial features of the foot trajectory: forward and vertical displacements from the heel strike to toe-off (F1 and F2, respectively), maximum clearance (F2 and V2, respectively), and change of supporting leg (F3 and V3, respectively). The vertical and horizontal axes are the vertical and forward displacements, respectively.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Averages of the forward and vertical displacements. (A) F1, (B) F2, (C) F3, (D) V1, (E) V2, and (F) V3. mPD, HO, HY, and aPD represent mild PD patients, healthy older individuals, healthy young individuals, and advanced PD patients, respectively. The error bars indicate the standard deviations between the participants. *, **, and *** represent p < 0.05, p < 0.01, and p < 0.001, respectively.
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
Factor loadings of principal components from gait spatial features. Loading is the positive or negative correlation between a principal component and a variable. (A) Factor loadings of the first principal component, which is strongly and positively correlated to variables in the forward displacement (F1 to F3) and hence describes this displacement in the foot trajectory. (B) Factor loadings of the second principal component, which is strongly and positively correlated to variables in the vertical displacement (V1 to V3) and hence describes this displacement in the foot trajectory.
FIGURE 5
FIGURE 5
Scatter plot of the first two principal components extracted from subjects’ spatial gait features. The first and second component magnitudes represent the displacements of the foot trajectories in the forward and vertical directions, respectively. Healthy young individuals tended to have a larger first principal component than other subjects. The first principal component of mild PD patients and healthy older individuals is larger than that of advanced PD patients. The second principal component of healthy older individuals tends to be smaller than that of the other subjects.
FIGURE 6
FIGURE 6
Scatter plot for pairs of individual categories and boundaries using the first two principal components. (A) Mild PD patients and healthy older individuals. They are mainly distinguished by the second principal component, which represents the vertical displacements in the foot trajectory. (B) Mild PD patients and healthy young individuals. They are distinguished by both components. The foot trajectory of the mild PD patients tended to be larger in the vertical direction and smaller in the forward direction than in healthy young individuals. (C) Healthy older individuals and young individuals. They are also distinguished by both components. The foot trajectory of the healthy older individuals tended to be shorter in both directions than in healthy young individuals. (D) Mild and advanced PD patients. They are mainly distinguished by the first principal component, which represents the forward displacements. Each circle represents one subject, and the lines represent the boundaries between the two categories.
FIGURE 7
FIGURE 7
ROC curves and AUCs. (A) Mild PD patients and healthy older individuals. (B) Mild PD patients and healthy young individuals. (C) Healthy older individuals and young individuals. (D) Mild and advanced PD patients.
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