ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Digit. Health
Sec. Connected Health
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fdgth.2025.1590150
This article is part of the Research TopicEnhancing Gait Therapy with Artificial Intelligence: Current Trends and Future ProspectsView all articles
Clinic Versus Daily Life Gait Characteristics In Patients With Spinocerebellar Ataxia
Provisionally accepted
Vrutangkumar V Shah1,2*
Daniel Muzyka1Adam Jagodinsky1
Hannah Casey3James McNames1,4Mahmoud El-Gohary1Kristen Sowalsky1
Delaram Safarpour2
Patricia (Patty) Carlson-Kuhta2
Fay Horak1,2Christopher M Gomez3- 1APDM Wearable Technologies, A Clario Company, Portland, United States
- 2Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, Oregon, United States
- 3The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States
- 4Portland State University, Portland, Oregon, United States
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Background: Recent findings suggest that a single gait assessment in a clinic may not reflect everyday mobility.Objective: We compared gait measures that best differentiated individuals with spinocerebellar ataxia (SCA) from age-matched healthy controls (HC) during a supervised gait test in the clinic versus a week of unsupervised gait during daily life.Methods: Twenty-six individuals with SCA types 1, 2, 3, and 6, and 13 (HC) wore three Opal inertial sensors (on both feet and lower back) during a 2-minute walk in the clinic and for seven days in daily life. Seventeen gait measures were analyzed to investigate the group differences using Mann-Whitney U tests and area under the curve (AUC).Results: Ten gait measures were significantly worse in SCA than HC for the clinic test (p<0.003), but only 3 were worse in daily life (p<0.003). Only a few gait measures consistently discriminated groups in both environments. Specifically, variability in Swing Time and Double Support Time had AUCs of 0.99 (p<0.0001) and 0.96 (p<0.0001) in the clinic, and 0.84 (p<0.0003) and 0.80 (p<0.002) in daily life, respectively. Clinical gait measures showed stronger correlations with clinical outcomes (ie, SARA and FARS-ADL; r = 0.50-0.77) than between daily life gait measures (r = 0.31-0.49). Gait activity in daily life was not statistically significant between the SCA and HC groups (p > 0.06).Digital gait measures discriminate SCA in both environments. In-clinic measures are more sensitive, while daily life measures provide ecological validity, highlighting a tradeoff and offering complementary insights.
Keywords: Gait, IMUs, Wearable Technology, daily life monitoring, spinocerebellar ataxia
Received: 08 Mar 2025; Accepted: 28 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Shah, Muzyka, Jagodinsky, Casey, McNames, El-Gohary, Sowalsky, Safarpour, Carlson-Kuhta, Horak and Gomez. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Vrutangkumar V Shah, APDM Wearable Technologies, A Clario Company, Portland, United States
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