Distinguishing Different Stages of Parkinson’s Disease Using Composite Index of Speed and Pen-Pressure of Sketching a Spiral

The speed and pen-pressure while sketching a spiral are lower among Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients with higher severity of the disease. However, the correlation between these features and the severity level (SL) of PD has been reported to be 0.4. There is a need for identifying parameters with a stronger correlation for considering this for accurate diagnosis of the disease. This study has proposed the use of the Composite Index of Speed and Pen-pressure (CISP) of sketching as a feature for analyzing the severity of PD. 28 Control group (CG) and 27 PD patients; total 55 participants, were recruited and assessed for United Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS). They drew guided Archimedean spiral on an A3 sheet. Speed, pen-pressure and CISP were computed and analyzed to obtain their correlation with severity of the disease. The correlation of speed, pen-pressure and CISP with the severity of PD was; -0.415, -0.584 and -0.641 respectively. Mann-Whitney U test confirmed that CISP was suitable to distinguish between PD and CG, while nonparametric k-sample Kruskal-Wallis test confirmed that it was significantly different for PD SL-1 and PD SL-3. This shows that CISP during spiral sketching may be used to differentiate between CG, Parkinson’s disease and between PD SL-1 and PD SL-3 but not SL-2.