Analyzing progression of motor and speech impairment in ALS

Carla Agurto, Mary Pietrowicz, Elif K. Eyigoz, Elizabeth Mosmiller, Emily Baxi, Jeffrey D. Rothstein, Promit Roy, James Berry, Nicholas J. Maragakis, Omar Ahmad, Guillermo A. Cecchi, Raquel Norel

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a degenerative disease which causes death of neurons controlling voluntary muscles. It is currently assessed with subjective clinical measurements, but it would benefit from alternative surrogate biomarkers that can better estimate disease progression. This work analyzes speech and fine motor coordination of subjects recruited by the Answer ALS foundation using data from a mobile app. In addition, clinical variables such as speech, writing and total ALSFRS-R scores are also acquired along with forced and slow vital capacity. Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses were performed using speech and fine motor features. Results show that both types of features are useful to infer clinical variables especially for males (R2=0.79 for ALSFRS-R total score), but their initial values are not helpful to predict speech and motor decline. However, we found that longitudinal progression for bulbar and spinal ALS onset are different and they can be identified with high accuracy by the extracted features.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication2019 41st Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBC 2019
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages6097-6102
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9781538613115
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 2019
Externally publishedYes
Event41st Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBC 2019 - Berlin, Germany
Duration: Jul 23 2019Jul 27 2019

Publication series

NameProceedings of the Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBS
ISSN (Print)1557-170X

Conference

Conference41st Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBC 2019
Country/TerritoryGermany
CityBerlin
Period7/23/197/27/19

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Signal Processing
  • Biomedical Engineering
  • Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
  • Health Informatics

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