CHARACTERISTICS OF HAND TREMOR TIME-SERIES

Tremor is classified into physiological, essential, and parkinsonian t remor by means of clinical criteria. The aim of our work was to extrac t quantitative features from the measurements of the acceleration of h uman postural hand tremor. Different mathematical methods were adopted and modified in order to separate these three types of tremor. Best d iscrimination between physiological and pathological tremors has been achieved by methods distinguishing nonlinear from linear behavior. On the other hand, methods separating different forms of nonlinear behavi or have been found to be superior in discriminating parkinsonian and e ssential tremor. By these methods physiological and pathological tremo rs can be separated with an error rate below 20% and essential and par kinsonian tremor with an error rate below 10%. This may help to classi fy tremor time series by objective mathematical criteria and may incre ase the understanding of the pathophysiological differences underlying these kinds of tremor.