We-Measure: Toward a low-cost portable posturography for patients with multiple sclerosis using the commercial Wii balance board.
This study was aimed at investigating whether postural sway measures derived from a standard force platform were similar to those generated by a custom-written software ("We-Measure") acquiring and processing data from a commercial Nintendo balance board (BB). For this purpose, 90 patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) and 50 healthy controls (HC) were tested in a single-day session with a reference standard force platform and a BB-based system. Despite its acceptable between-device agreement (tested by visual evaluation of Bland-Altman plot), the low-cost BB-based system tended to overestimate postural sway when compared to the reference standard force platform in both MS and HC groups (on average +30% and +54%, respectively). Between-device reliability was just adequate (MS: 66%, HC: 47%), while test-retest reliability was excellent (MS: 84%, HC: 88%). Concurrent validity evaluation showed similar performance between the reference standard force platform and the BB-based system in discriminating fallers and non-fallers among patients with MS. All these findings may encourage the use of this balance board-based new device in longitudinal study, rather than in cross-sectional design, thus providing a potential useful tool for multicenter settings.
Physical Therapy Unit, S. Andrea Hospital, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy.
Letizia
L
Castelli
Department of Engineering, Roma Tre University, Rome, Italy.
Luca
L
Stocchi
Department of Engineering, Roma Tre University, Rome, Italy.
Maurizio
M
Patrignani
Physical Therapy Unit, S. Andrea Hospital, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy.
Giovanni
G
Sellitto
Department of Neurology and Psychiatry, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy.
Manuela
M
Giuliani
Department of Neurology and Psychiatry, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy. Electronic address: luca.prosperini@uniroma1.it.
Luca
L
Prosperini
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009103:Multiple Sclerosis / Q000175:diagnosis*; D004856:Postural Balance / Q000502:physiology*; D012372:ROC Curve; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012984:Software; D018910:Video Games; D055815:Young Adult
Balance board; Force platform; Multiple sclerosis; Static posturography; Wii