Real-Time Freezing of Gait Prediction and Detection in Parkinson’s Disease

Freezing of gait (FOG) is a walking disturbance that can lead to postural instability, falling, and decreased mobility in people with Parkinson’s disease. This research used machine learning to predict and detect FOG episodes from plantar-pressure data and compared the performance of decision tree ensemble classifiers when trained on three different datasets. Dataset 1 (n = 11) was collected in a previous study. Dataset 2 (n = 10) included six new participants and four participants from Dataset 1 who were re-tested (approximately 2 years later), and Dataset 3 (n = 21) combined Datasets 1 and 2. The prediction model trained on Dataset 3 had a 2.28% higher sensitivity and 3.09% lower specificity compared to the models trained on Dataset 1. The model trained on Dataset 3 identified 86.84% of the total FOG episodes compared to 74.31% from the model trained on Dataset 1. Also, the model using Dataset 3 identified the FOG episodes 0.3 s earlier than the model developed with Dataset 1. The model trained using Dataset 3 showed improved performance in sensitivity, identification time, and FOG identification. The improvements using the expanded dataset (Dataset 3) in this study compared to the previous model reinforce the validity and generalizability of the original model. The model was able to predict and detect FOG well and is, therefore, ready to be implemented in a FOG prevention device.