Evaluation of handwriting kinematics and pressure for differential diagnosis of Parkinson's disease

journal article in Web of Science

English

We present the PaHaW Parkinson's disease handwriting database, consisting of handwriting samples from Parkinson's disease (PD) patients and healthy controls. Our goal is to show that kinematic features and pressure features in handwriting can be used for the differential diagnosis of PD. The database contains records from 37 PD patients and 38 healthy controls performing eight different handwriting tasks. The tasks include drawing an Archimedean spiral, repetitively writing orthographically simple syllables and words, and writing of a sentence. In addition to the conventional kinematic features related to the dynamics of handwriting, we investigated new pressure features based on the pressure exerted on the writing surface. To discriminate between PD patients and healthy subjects, three different classifiers were compared: K-nearest neighbors (K-NN), ensemble AdaBoost classifier, and support vector machines (SVM). For predicting PD based on kinematic and pressure features of handwriting, the best performing model was SVM with classification accuracy of Pacc = 81.3% (sensitivity Psen = 87.4% and specificity of Pspe = 80.9%). When evaluated separately, pressure features proved to be relevant for PD diagnosis, yielding Pacc = 82.5% compared to Pacc = 75.4% using kinematic features. Experimental results showed that an analysis of kinematic and pressure features during handwriting can help assess subtle characteristics of handwriting and discriminate between PD patients and healthy controls.

Decision support system, support vector machine classifier, handwriting database, handwriting pressure, Parkinson's disease, PD dysgraphia

DROTÁR, P.; MEKYSKA, J.; REKTOROVÁ, I.; MASÁROVÁ, L.; SMÉKAL, Z.; FAÚNDEZ ZANUY, M.

1. 2. 2016

0933-3657

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN MEDICINE

67

1

Kingdom of the Netherlands

39

46

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