Abstract
Among neural disorders related to movement, essential tremor has the highest prevalence; in fact, it is twenty times more common than Parkinson’s disease. The drawing of the Archimedes’ spiral is the gold standard test to distinguish between both pathologies. The aim of this paper is to select non-linear biomarkers based on the analysis of digital drawings. It belongs to a larger cross study for early diagnosis of essential tremor that also includes genetic information. The proposed automatic analysis system consists in a hybrid solution: Machine Learning paradigms and automatic selection of features based on statistical tests using medical criteria. Moreover, the selected biomarkers comprise not only commonly used linear features (static and dynamic), but also other non-linear ones: Shannon entropy and Fractal Dimension. The results are hopeful, and the developed tool can easily be adapted to users; and taking into account social and economic points of view, it could be very helpful in real complex environments.
Highlights
Essential tremor (ET) is a worldwide disease that is twenty times more common than Parkinson’s disease (PD) [1]
The principal goal of this work is the analysis of features in the drawing of the Archimedes’ spiral, the gold standard test for ET diagnosis
The selection of non-linear biomarkers from handwriting and drawings belongs to a larger cross study aimed at diagnosing essential tremor
Summary
Essential tremor (ET) is a worldwide disease that is twenty times more common than Parkinson’s disease (PD) [1]. The prevalence of this motor disorder is about 0.3% to 4.0%. Its incidence is 23.7 per 100,000 individuals per year, and both men and women of 40 years old are Entropy 2018, 20, 531; doi:10.3390/e20070531 www.mdpi.com/journal/entropy. Entropy 2018, 20, 531 affected more or less in the same proportion; there are no differences with regard to gender. ET is a rhythmic tremor (4 to 12 Hz) which only manifests when the muscle is exerting, and the tremor’s amplitude varies as the patient becomes older. ET is characterized by both kinetic and postural tremor, and most of the times it affects the hands. Almost every other tremor occurs combined with hand tremor [2]
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