M Encarna Micó-Amigo

Heriot-Watt University · School of Engineering and Physical Sciences

Background Wrist-worn inertial sensors are used in digital health for evaluating mobility in real-world environments. Preceding the estimation of spatiotemporal gait parameters within long-term recordings, gait detection is an important step to identify regions of interest where gait occurs, which requires robust algorithms due to the complexity of...

This study aimed to validate a wearable device's walking speed estimation pipeline, considering complexity, speed, and walking bout duration. The goal was to provide recommendations on the use of wearable devices for real-world mobility analysis. Participants with Parkinson's Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Proximal Femoral Fracture, Chronic Obstructi...

This study aimed to validate a wearable device’s walking speed estimation pipeline, considering complexity, speed, and walking bout duration. The goal was to provide recommendations on the use of wearable devices for real-world mobility analysis. Participants with Parkinson’s Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Proximal Femoral Fracture, Chronic Obstructi...

Introduction The clinical assessment of mobility, and walking specifically, is still mainly based on functional tests that lack ecological validity. Thanks to inertial measurement units (IMUs), gait analysis is shifting to unsupervised monitoring in naturalistic and unconstrained settings. However, the extraction of clinically relevant gait paramet...

Background Gait characteristics are important risk factors for falls, hospitalisations, and mortality in older adults, but the impact of COPD on gait performance remains unclear. We aimed to identify differences in gait characteristics between adults with COPD and healthy age-matched controls during (1) laboratory tests that included complex moveme...

BACKGROUND Wrist worn inertial sensors are used in digital health for evaluating mobility in real-world environments. Preceding the estimation of spatio-temporal gait parameters within continuous long-term recordings, gait detection is an important step to identify regions of interest where gait occurs, which requires robust algorithms due to the c...

Background Although digital mobility outcomes (DMOs) can be readily calculated from real-world data collected with wearable devices and ad-hoc algorithms, technical validation is still required. The aim of this paper is to comparatively assess and validate DMOs estimated using real-world gait data from six different cohorts, focusing on gait sequen...

Background Estimation of walking speed from wearable devices requires combining a set of algorithms in a single analytical pipeline. The aim of this study was to validate a pipeline for walking speed estimation and assess its performance across different factors (complexity, speed, and walking bout duration) to make recommendations on the use and v...

Introduction: Accurately assessing people’s gait, especially in real-world conditions and in case of impaired mobility, is still a challenge due to intrinsic and extrinsic factors resulting in gait complexity. To improve the estimation of gait-related digital mobility outcomes (DMOs) in real-world scenarios, this study presents a wearable multi-sen...

Wearable devices are used in movement analysis and physical activity research to extract clinically relevant information about an individual’s mobility. Still, heterogeneity in protocols, sensor characteristics, data formats, and gold standards represent a barrier for data sharing, reproducibility, and external validation. In this study, we aim at...

Accurately assessing people's gait, especially in real-world conditions and in case of impaired mobility, is still a challenge due to intrinsic and extrinsic factors resulting in gait complexity. To improve the estimation of gait-related digital mobility outcomes (DMOs) in real-world scenarios, this study presents a wearable multi-sensor system (IN...

Background Measuring mobility in daily life entails dealing with confounding factors arising from multiple sources, including pathological characteristics, patient specific walking strategies, environment/context, and purpose of the task. The primary aim of this study is to propose and validate a protocol for simulating real-world gait accounting f...

Background: Although digital mobility outcomes (DMOs) can be readily calculated from real-world data collected with wearable devices (WD) and ad-hoc algorithms, technical validation is still required. The aim of this paper is to comparatively assess and validate DMOs estimated using real-world gait data from six different cohorts, focusing on gait...

Background: Measuring mobility in daily life entails dealing with confounding factors arising from multiple sources, including pathological characteristics, patient specific walking strategies, environment/context, and purpose of the task. The primary aim of this study is to propose and validate a multi-task and multi-phase protocol for simulating...

Introduction Existing mobility endpoints based on functional performance, physical assessments and patient self-reporting are often affected by lack of sensitivity, limiting their utility in clinical practice. Wearable devices including inertial measurement units (IMUs) can overcome these limitations by quantifying digital mobility outcomes (DMOs)...

Physical mobility is essential to health, and patients often rate it as a high-priority clinical outcome. Digital mobility outcomes (DMOs), such as real-world gait speed or step count, show promise as clinical measures in many medical conditions. However, current research is nascent and fragmented by discipline. This scoping review maps existing ev...

Background: Understanding how prostheses are used in everyday life is central to the design, provision and evaluation of prosthetic devices and associated services. This paper reviews the scientific literature on methodologies and technologies that have been used to assess the daily use of both upper- and lower-limb prostheses. It discusses the ty...

Introduction Advances in wearable sensor technology now enable frequent, objective monitoring of real-world walking. Walking-related digital mobility outcomes (DMOs), such as real-world walking speed, have the potential to be more sensitive to mobility changes than traditional clinical assessments. However, it is not yet clear which DMOs are most s...

Background Understanding how prostheses are used in everyday life is central to the design, provision and evaluation of prosthetic devices and associated services. This paper reviews the scientific literature on methodologies and technologies that have been used to assess the daily use of both upper- and lower-limb prostheses. It discusses the type...

Gait may be a useful biomarker that can be objectively measured with wearable technology to classify Parkinson’s disease (PD). This study aims to: (i) comprehensively quantify a battery of commonly utilized gait digital characteristics (spatiotemporal and signal-based), and (ii) identify the best discriminative characteristics for the optimal class...

Asymmetry is a cardinal symptom of gait post-stroke that is targeted during rehabilitation. Technological developments have allowed accelerometers to be a feasible tool to provide digital gait variables. Many acceleration-derived variables are proposed to measure gait asymmetry. Despite a need for accurate calculation, no consensus exists for what...

Mean and standard deviation values of all features. Mean ± standard deviation of all features being not log transformed, nor z-score normalized. The data is presented for the three groups (Early-PD, Mid-PD, and HC) and for the three protocols (Walk, W-Subtract, W-Mark). SD, standard deviation; VT, vertical acceleration; ML, medio-lateral accelerati...

Flowchart visits. Biannual visits performed by each of the participants. Complete datasets of 5 consecutive year visits were not always available in the MODEP cohort (HC: 52.0%; Early-PD: 59.1%; Mid-PD: 40.7%). This was partially due to the fact that some participants were recruited later in the MODEP study and therefore have not (yet) completed 10...

Confounders included in the GEE analysis for the comparison Early-PD vs. HC and Mid-PD vs. HC for the three conditions: Walk, W-Subtract and W-Mark. Significant confounders that were accounted for the analysis are indicated as follows: “a” for gait speed effect, “b” for age effect and “c” for ON/OFF medication state effect. Note that the gait featu...

Time factor corresponding to the GEE analysis for the comparison Early-PD vs. HC and Mid-PD vs. HC and obtained for gait features under the three conditions: Walk, W-Subtract and W-Mark. Significance of results was marked with dark gray (p < 0.05) and light gray (p < 0.10). SD, standard deviation; VT, vertical acceleration; ML, medio-lateral accele...

Time factor corresponding to the GEE analysis for the comparison Early-PD vs. HC and Mid-PD vs. HC and obtained for DTI and S-DTI data under both dual-tasking conditions: W-Subtract and W-Mark. Significance of results was marked with dark gray (p < 0.05) and light gray (p < 0.10). SD, standard deviation; VT, vertical acceleration; ML, medio-lateral...

Background and Aim: Reliable, valid and sensitive measures of dual-task-associated impairments in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) may reveal progressive deficits unnoticed under single-task walking. The aim of this study was to quantitatively identify markers of progressive gait deficits in idiopathic PD while walking over a circular traject...

Background and Aim: Development of objective, reliable and easy-to-use methods to obtain progression markers of Parkinson’s disease (PD) is required to evaluate interventions and to advance research in PD. This study aimed to provide quantitative markers of progression in idiopathic PD from the assessment of circular gait (walking in circles) with...

Esta propuesta pretende involucrar a jóvenes estudiantes de educación secundaria obligatoria (ESO) y bachillerato en un proyecto experimental basado en la aplicación de tecnología médica para el estudio de la enfermedad de Parkinson (EP). Dicha propuesta consta de una sesión informativa y de dos sesiones prácticas a desarrollar en el aula-taller d...

Quantitative assessment of gait in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) is an important step in addressing motor symptoms and improving clinical management. Based on the assessment of only 5 meters of gait with a single body-fixed-sensor placed on the lower back, this study presents a method for the identification of step-by-step kinematic parame...

Velocity and displacement in the AP direction were calculated from the raw acceleration and angular velocity signals recorded on the low-back, including the pre and post standing phases, using the following calculation steps: 1. During the stationary initial and final standing phases, the sensor orientation about the global horizontal axes (sensor...

Quantitative assessment of gait in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) is an important step in addressing motor symptoms and improving clinical management. In this study, episodes of 5 meters of gait were assessed with a single body-fixed-sensor on the lower back to identify step-by-step kinematic parameters that discriminated between 24 patient...

Background The assessment of short episodes of gait is clinically relevant and easily implemented, especially given limited space and time requirements. BFS (body-fixed-sensors) are small, lightweight and easy to wear sensors, which allow the assessment of gait at relative low cost and with low interference. Thus, the assessment with BFS of short e...

Introduction: The instrumented-Timed-Up-and-Go test (iTUG) provides detailed information about the following movement patterns: sit-to-walk (siwa), straight walking, turning and walk-to-sit (wasi). We were interested in the relative contributions of respective iTUG sub-phases to specific clinical deficits most relevant for daily life in Parkinson'...

Introduction Health related quality of life (HRQoL) is widely accepted as the most important factor for patients living with chronic diseases, and therefore as the most important factor to evaluate (success of) treatment. The downside of the parameter is that evaluation is qualitative, imprecise and prone to bias. To overcome these shortcomings, qu...