Smartphone Based Fuzzy Logic Freezing of Gait Detection in Parkinson’s Disease

The freezing of gait (FOG) is a common and highly
distressing motor symptom of patients with Parkinson’s Disease
(PD). Effective management of FOG is difficult given its episodic
nature, heterogeneous manifestation and limited responsiveness
to drug treatment. Clinicians found alternative approaches,
such as rhythmic cueing. We built a smartphone-based architecture
in agreement with acceptability and usability requirements
which is able to gather data and information useful to detect
FOG. In this work fusing together the information of freeze
index, energy, cadency variation and the ratio of the derivative
of the energy a novel Fuzzy Logic based algorithm is developed.
Performances of the Fuzzy algorithm are compared with two
other algorithms showing its capability to reduce false negative
detection thus improving sensitivity and specificity