Quantitative Assessment of Friedreich Ataxia via Self-Drinking Activity

R. Krishna, P. N. Pathirana, M. K. Horne, L. A. Corben and D. J. Szmulewicz; IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics, vol. 25, no. 6, pp. 1985-1996, June 2021, doi: 10.1109/JBHI.2021.3069007. 

Effective monitoring of the progression of neurodegenerative conditions can be significantly improved by objective assessments. Clinical assessments of conditions such as Friedreich's Ataxia (FA), currently rely on subjective measures commonly practiced in clinics as well as the ability of the affected individual to perform conventional tests of the neurological examination. In this study, we propose an ataxia measuring device, in the form of a pressure canister capable of sensing certain kinetic and kinematic parameters of interest to quantify the impairment levels of participants particularly when engaged in an activity that is closely associated with daily living. In particular, the functional task of simulated drinking was utilised to capture characteristic features of disability manifestation in terms of diagnosis (separation of individuals with FA and controls) and severity assessment of individuals diagnosed with the debilitating condition of FA. Time and frequency domain analysis of these biomarkers enabled the classification of individuals with FA and control subjects to reach an accuracy of 98% and a correlation level reaching 96% with the clinical scores.