The goal of this project is to better understand walking and impaired walking (slow, shuffling or freezing of gait), in Parkinson's disease as it compares to that of age-matched healthy controls. We use data from wearable inertial measurement unit sensors (IMUs, made by APDM Inc.) to calculate gait parameters as previously described (Syrkin-Nikolau et al., Neurobiology of disease, 2017) that characterize the dynamics of people walking in both a turning and barrier course designed to elicit freezing of gait (Syrkin-Nikolau et al., Neurobiology of disease, 2017) and over forty meters of straight forward walking, the clinical test of Parkinsonian gait. Sensors are applied to both feet, shanks along with the lumbar and chest regions of the trunk.

The records in this database are from patients with Parkinson's disease who experience severe walking symptoms like freezing of gait (FOG), also identified as "freezers" as well as data from people with Parkinson's disease who do not experience FOG (non-freezers). For comparison, we also have a small cohort of age-matched healthy controls who do not have Parkinson's disease and who completed the walking tasks. There were 20 total subjects with Parkinson's disease that completed the walking tasks, but 11 of these subjects returned for a later research visit where they completed the same tasks (at least 1 year later). This makes a total of 31 records from subjects with Parkinson's disease and 9 records from age-matched healthy control subjects, for a total of 40 records.

Related publication:
O'Day, J., Syrkin-Nikolau, J., Anidi, C., Kidzinski, L., Delp, S., & Bronte-Stewart, H. (2019). The Turning and Barrier Course: a standardized tool for identifying freezing of gait and demonstrating the efficacy of deep brain stimulation. bioRxiv, 671479.