Quantifying Timed-Up-and-Go test: A smartphone implementation

Abstract

Timed-Up-and-Go (TUG) is a simple, easy to administer, and frequently used test for assessing balance and mobility in elderly and people with Parkinson's disease. An instrumented version of the test (iTUG) has been recently introduced to better quantify subject's movements during the test. The subject is typically instrumented by a dedicated device designed to capture signals from inertial sensors that are later analyzed by healthcare professionals. In this paper we introduce a smartphone application called sTUG that completely automates the iTUG test so it can be performed at home. sTUG captures the subject's movements utilizing smartphone's built-in accelerometer and gyroscope sensors, determines the beginning and the end of the test and quantifies its individual phases, and optionally uploads test descriptors into a medical database. We describe the parameters used to quantify the iTUG test and algorithms to extract the parameters from signals captured by the smartphone sensors.