PC-BASED SYSTEM FOR AN OBJECTIVE QUANTIFICATION OF MANUAL MOVEMENT DISABILITY FOR CLINICAL AND SCIENTIFIC PURPOSES

In clinical management and research of movement disorders exact knowle dge about the extent of motor impairment is essential. This paper pres ents a computer program which allows for an objective measurement of m anual movement disability. The program was developed for standard hard ware and can easily be used in a variety of clinical and research envi ronments. The program runs on MS-DOS computers and uses a Microsoft co mputer mouse as the only input device. The temporal resolution is 100 Hz, the spatial resolution 400 dots per inch. The user may choose betw een standard test sets or he may design sets according to his individu al needs from a pool of available protocols which includes tracking ta sks, ballistic tasks, complex sequential tasks, and finger tapping. Al l tasks are implemented in a similar way in order to keep the test env ironment as consistent as possible for the patient. The patient must u sually carry out movements which correspond to the movements of a targ et symbol on the computer screen. This entails the manipulation of a f ollower symbol, also visible on the computer screen, via the computer mouse. The program itself and the theoretical background of the protoc ols are described in the paper. Additionally, preliminary results from pilot experiments are presented.