Measuring finger dexterity in Parkinson’s disease with mobile phones

This work aims to link finger tapping and drawing tests performed on mobile phone screens with clinical ratings of Parkinson's Disease (PD). Thirty PD patients were recruited and instructed to carry out these tests in their homes. Features were extracted and used to assess the validity of the data vis a vis clinical scales (MDS-UPDRS). Statistical tests show that several features correlate with clinical scores (max correlation 0.54) and significant differences between data collected before and after medication intake (p<0.05), demonstrating the clinical validity of smartphone data. The use of Machine Learning (ML) algorithms to regress Part-3 of MDS-UPDRS further supports the validity with an absolute mean error of 6.25 (over a 0-72 scale).