title: Posturography in differential diagnosis of normal pressure hydrocephalus and brain atrophy.
abstract: Differentiation between normal pressure hydrocephalus (NPH) and brain atrophy is difficult in clinical practice. The purpose of this paper was to apply two advanced statistical, pattern recognition methods: discriminant analysis (DA) and k-nearest neighbour (K-NN) for the classification of NPH and atrophy patients to approach computer aided differential diagnosis. The classification is based on a few measures of the center of foot pressure (COP) movements (radius, area, and length). The posturography method gives a measure of current postural stability by a quantitative evaluation of postural sways. Measurements have been performed in the standing upright position in two conditions: with eyes open (EO) and closed (EC). The study comprises 18 patients (mean age 64 ±13 years) diagnosed as normal pressure hydrocephalus and qualifying for shunt implantation. The patients were evaluated by static posturography twice: before and after surgery. The NPH patients were compared with 36 atrophy patients (mean age 64±13 years) and 47 healthy persons (mean age 60 ±7 years). There were two basic dissimilarities in the NPH patients before surgery in comparison with the other groups: very large sways and their independence from vision. Over 90% of the NPH cases both before and after surgery were correctly classified. There also were over 90% of correctly classified patients if we compared the before surgery NPH and atrophy patients. Further posturographic measurements and data collection are needed to verify these results.
authors: Department of Respiratory Research, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland. czerwosz@imdik.pan.pl
authors: Leszek
authors: L
authors: Czerwosz
authors: Ewa
authors: E
authors: Szczepek
authors: Beata
authors: B
authors: Sokolowska
authors: Jerzy
authors: J
authors: Jurkiewicz
authors: Zbigniew
authors: Z
authors: Czernicki
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001284:Atrophy; D001921:Brain / Q000473:pathology*; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D006801:Humans; D006850:Hydrocephalus, Normal Pressure / Q000145:classification / Q000175:diagnosis*; D008875:Middle Aged; D014567:Urography