Detecting Motor Impairment in Early Parkinson’s Disease via Natural Typing Interaction With Keyboards: Validation of the neuroQWERTY Approach in an Uncontrolled At-Home Setting

Background: Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most prevalent neurodegenerative disease and one of the most common forms of movement disorder. Although there is no known cure for PD, existing therapies can provide effective symptomatic relief. However, optimal titration is crucial to avoid adver...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Arroyo Gallego, Teresa, Ledesma-Carbayo, María J, Butterworth, Ian, Matarazzo, Michele, Montero-Escribano, Paloma, Puertas-Martín, Verónica, Gray, Martha L., Giancardo, Luca, Sanchez Ferro, Alvaro
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Institute for Medical Engineering & Science
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: JMIR Publications Inc. 2020
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/128896
_version_ 1826216144640409600
author Arroyo Gallego, Teresa
Ledesma-Carbayo, María J
Butterworth, Ian
Matarazzo, Michele
Montero-Escribano, Paloma
Puertas-Martín, Verónica
Gray, Martha L.
Giancardo, Luca
Sanchez Ferro, Alvaro
author2 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Institute for Medical Engineering & Science
author_facet Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Institute for Medical Engineering & Science
Arroyo Gallego, Teresa
Ledesma-Carbayo, María J
Butterworth, Ian
Matarazzo, Michele
Montero-Escribano, Paloma
Puertas-Martín, Verónica
Gray, Martha L.
Giancardo, Luca
Sanchez Ferro, Alvaro
author_sort Arroyo Gallego, Teresa
collection MIT
description Background: Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most prevalent neurodegenerative disease and one of the most common forms of movement disorder. Although there is no known cure for PD, existing therapies can provide effective symptomatic relief. However, optimal titration is crucial to avoid adverse effects. Today, decision making for PD management is challenging because it relies on subjective clinical evaluations that require a visit to the clinic. This challenge has motivated recent research initiatives to develop tools that can be used by nonspecialists to assess psychomotor impairment. Among these emerging solutions, we recently reported the neuroQWERTY index, a new digital marker able to detect motor impairment in an early PD cohort through the analysis of the key press and release timing data collected during a controlled in-clinic typing task. Objective: The aim of this study was to extend the in-clinic implementation to an at-home implementation by validating the applicability of the neuroQWERTY approach in an uncontrolled at-home setting, using the typing data from subjects’ natural interaction with their laptop to enable remote and unobtrusive assessment of PD signs. Methods: We implemented the data-collection platform and software to enable access and storage of the typing data generated by users while using their computer at home. We recruited a total of 60 participants; of these participants 52 (25 people with Parkinson’s and 27 healthy controls) provided enough data to complete the analysis. Finally, to evaluate whether our in-clinic-built algorithm could be used in an uncontrolled at-home setting, we compared its performance on the data collected during the controlled typing task in the clinic and the results of our method using the data passively collected at home. Results: Despite the randomness and sparsity introduced by the uncontrolled setting, our algorithm performed nearly as well in the at-home data (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve [AUC] of 0.76 and sensitivity/specificity of 0.73/0.69) as it did when used to evaluate the in-clinic data (AUC 0.83 and sensitivity/specificity of 0.77/0.72). Moreover, the keystroke metrics presented a strong correlation between the 2 typing settings, which suggests a minimal influence of the in-clinic typing task in users’ normal typing. Conclusions: The finding that an algorithm trained on data from an in-clinic setting has comparable performance with that tested on data collected through naturalistic at-home computer use reinforces the hypothesis that subtle differences in motor function can be detected from typing behavior. This work represents another step toward an objective, user-convenient, and quasi-continuous monitoring tool for PD.
first_indexed 2024-09-23T16:42:59Z
format Article
id mit-1721.1/128896
institution Massachusetts Institute of Technology
language English
last_indexed 2024-09-23T16:42:59Z
publishDate 2020
publisher JMIR Publications Inc.
record_format dspace
spelling mit-1721.1/1288962022-10-03T07:48:20Z Detecting Motor Impairment in Early Parkinson’s Disease via Natural Typing Interaction With Keyboards: Validation of the neuroQWERTY Approach in an Uncontrolled At-Home Setting Arroyo Gallego, Teresa Ledesma-Carbayo, María J Butterworth, Ian Matarazzo, Michele Montero-Escribano, Paloma Puertas-Martín, Verónica Gray, Martha L. Giancardo, Luca Sanchez Ferro, Alvaro Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Institute for Medical Engineering & Science Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Research Laboratory of Electronics Background: Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most prevalent neurodegenerative disease and one of the most common forms of movement disorder. Although there is no known cure for PD, existing therapies can provide effective symptomatic relief. However, optimal titration is crucial to avoid adverse effects. Today, decision making for PD management is challenging because it relies on subjective clinical evaluations that require a visit to the clinic. This challenge has motivated recent research initiatives to develop tools that can be used by nonspecialists to assess psychomotor impairment. Among these emerging solutions, we recently reported the neuroQWERTY index, a new digital marker able to detect motor impairment in an early PD cohort through the analysis of the key press and release timing data collected during a controlled in-clinic typing task. Objective: The aim of this study was to extend the in-clinic implementation to an at-home implementation by validating the applicability of the neuroQWERTY approach in an uncontrolled at-home setting, using the typing data from subjects’ natural interaction with their laptop to enable remote and unobtrusive assessment of PD signs. Methods: We implemented the data-collection platform and software to enable access and storage of the typing data generated by users while using their computer at home. We recruited a total of 60 participants; of these participants 52 (25 people with Parkinson’s and 27 healthy controls) provided enough data to complete the analysis. Finally, to evaluate whether our in-clinic-built algorithm could be used in an uncontrolled at-home setting, we compared its performance on the data collected during the controlled typing task in the clinic and the results of our method using the data passively collected at home. Results: Despite the randomness and sparsity introduced by the uncontrolled setting, our algorithm performed nearly as well in the at-home data (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve [AUC] of 0.76 and sensitivity/specificity of 0.73/0.69) as it did when used to evaluate the in-clinic data (AUC 0.83 and sensitivity/specificity of 0.77/0.72). Moreover, the keystroke metrics presented a strong correlation between the 2 typing settings, which suggests a minimal influence of the in-clinic typing task in users’ normal typing. Conclusions: The finding that an algorithm trained on data from an in-clinic setting has comparable performance with that tested on data collected through naturalistic at-home computer use reinforces the hypothesis that subtle differences in motor function can be detected from typing behavior. This work represents another step toward an objective, user-convenient, and quasi-continuous monitoring tool for PD. 2020-12-22T19:14:01Z 2020-12-22T19:14:01Z 2018-03 2017-12 2019-05-30T13:07:36Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 1438-8871 https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/128896 Arroyo Gallego, Teresa et al. "Detecting Motor Impairment in Early Parkinson’s Disease via Natural Typing Interaction With Keyboards: Validation of the neuroQWERTY Approach in an Uncontrolled At-Home Setting." Journal of Medical Internet Research 20, 3 (March 2018): e89 © 2018 Teresa Arroyo-Gallego et al. en http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/jmir.9462 Journal of Medical Internet Research Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ application/pdf JMIR Publications Inc. Journal of Medical Internet Research
spellingShingle Arroyo Gallego, Teresa
Ledesma-Carbayo, María J
Butterworth, Ian
Matarazzo, Michele
Montero-Escribano, Paloma
Puertas-Martín, Verónica
Gray, Martha L.
Giancardo, Luca
Sanchez Ferro, Alvaro
Detecting Motor Impairment in Early Parkinson’s Disease via Natural Typing Interaction With Keyboards: Validation of the neuroQWERTY Approach in an Uncontrolled At-Home Setting
title Detecting Motor Impairment in Early Parkinson’s Disease via Natural Typing Interaction With Keyboards: Validation of the neuroQWERTY Approach in an Uncontrolled At-Home Setting
title_full Detecting Motor Impairment in Early Parkinson’s Disease via Natural Typing Interaction With Keyboards: Validation of the neuroQWERTY Approach in an Uncontrolled At-Home Setting
title_fullStr Detecting Motor Impairment in Early Parkinson’s Disease via Natural Typing Interaction With Keyboards: Validation of the neuroQWERTY Approach in an Uncontrolled At-Home Setting
title_full_unstemmed Detecting Motor Impairment in Early Parkinson’s Disease via Natural Typing Interaction With Keyboards: Validation of the neuroQWERTY Approach in an Uncontrolled At-Home Setting
title_short Detecting Motor Impairment in Early Parkinson’s Disease via Natural Typing Interaction With Keyboards: Validation of the neuroQWERTY Approach in an Uncontrolled At-Home Setting
title_sort detecting motor impairment in early parkinson s disease via natural typing interaction with keyboards validation of the neuroqwerty approach in an uncontrolled at home setting
url https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/128896
work_keys_str_mv AT arroyogallegoteresa detectingmotorimpairmentinearlyparkinsonsdiseasevianaturaltypinginteractionwithkeyboardsvalidationoftheneuroqwertyapproachinanuncontrolledathomesetting
AT ledesmacarbayomariaj detectingmotorimpairmentinearlyparkinsonsdiseasevianaturaltypinginteractionwithkeyboardsvalidationoftheneuroqwertyapproachinanuncontrolledathomesetting
AT butterworthian detectingmotorimpairmentinearlyparkinsonsdiseasevianaturaltypinginteractionwithkeyboardsvalidationoftheneuroqwertyapproachinanuncontrolledathomesetting
AT matarazzomichele detectingmotorimpairmentinearlyparkinsonsdiseasevianaturaltypinginteractionwithkeyboardsvalidationoftheneuroqwertyapproachinanuncontrolledathomesetting
AT monteroescribanopaloma detectingmotorimpairmentinearlyparkinsonsdiseasevianaturaltypinginteractionwithkeyboardsvalidationoftheneuroqwertyapproachinanuncontrolledathomesetting
AT puertasmartinveronica detectingmotorimpairmentinearlyparkinsonsdiseasevianaturaltypinginteractionwithkeyboardsvalidationoftheneuroqwertyapproachinanuncontrolledathomesetting
AT graymarthal detectingmotorimpairmentinearlyparkinsonsdiseasevianaturaltypinginteractionwithkeyboardsvalidationoftheneuroqwertyapproachinanuncontrolledathomesetting
AT giancardoluca detectingmotorimpairmentinearlyparkinsonsdiseasevianaturaltypinginteractionwithkeyboardsvalidationoftheneuroqwertyapproachinanuncontrolledathomesetting
AT sanchezferroalvaro detectingmotorimpairmentinearlyparkinsonsdiseasevianaturaltypinginteractionwithkeyboardsvalidationoftheneuroqwertyapproachinanuncontrolledathomesetting