Automatic assessment of motor function in patients with spinal muscular atrophy: MFM-digital study

Introduction/Background Given the progress of research and management in Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), validated tools are needed to assess patients’ motor function. The Motor Function Measure assessment (MFM) is a validated and sensitive to the change tool applicable in SMA. Clinicians from the Neuromuscular Diseases Department (Hospices Civils de Lyon, France) are developing the MFM-digital, an automated system to assess SMA patients’ motor function based on MFM. By using a Microsoft Kinect and a digital tablet, the objective is to improve reliability and acceptability of the MFM by lowering the measure's subjectivity linked to heteroevaluation and by creating a hybrid serious-game. Material and method The feasibility study assesses the relevance of the system to capture postures and motions during a MFM test. On 32 items, 14 were recognized by the Kinect and 3 items were performed using a tablet. Scores provided by a therapist looking at the patients directly were compared to scores obtained by a blind scoring based on digital data coming from Kinect and tablet records and performed by a single evaluator. Results 21 records of MFM were collected with Kinect sensors. Records with tablets are still on-going. A great concordance between items scoring by a therapist and items scoring on captured digital data were found (76%). Conclusion The data supplied by the system MFM-digital bring additional data, in particular the timing of items’ exercises and kinematic parameters. Tracks of improvements of the system are on-going in particular concerning the capture for weaker patients. The next step is to use an algorithm to provide an automatic scoring based on digital data.