Characteristics of hand tremor time series.

Abstract

Tremor is classified into physiological, essential, and parkinsonian tremor by means of clinical criteria. The aim of our work was to extract quantitative features from the measurements of the acceleration of human postural hand tremor. Different mathematical methods were adopted and modified in order to separate these three types of tremor. Best discrimination between physiological and pathological tremors has been achieved by methods distinguishing nonlinear from linear behavior. On the other hand, methods separating different forms of nonlinear behavior have been found to be superior in discriminating parkinsonian and essential tremor. By these methods physiological and pathological tremors can be separated with an error rate below 20% and essential and parkinsonian tremor with an error rate below 10%. This may help to classify tremor time series by objective mathematical criteria and may increase the understanding of the pathophysiological differences underlying these kinds of tremor.