Quantifying Movement of the Head and Shoulders During Quiet Standing Using MatLab Software and Promising Parameters

Abstract

In this paper, we describe a method for quantifying movement of the head and shoulders during quiet standing. The method proposed allows for the determination of postural stability of the head and shoulders, especially during the Romberg’s test, by recording the relative angular movements. The proposed software is used to calculate new parameters of the head and shoulder movements. These parameters are: the area of the confidence ellipse of the inclination of the head versus the inclination of the shoulders and the area of the confidence ellipse of the head rotation versus the shoulder rotation, the size of the main and minor axis of the confidence ellipse of the inclination of the head versus the inclination of the shoulders and the size of the main and minor axes of the confidence ellipse of the head rotation versus the shoulder rotation. The proposed method was implemented using MatLab software. To test this method, we compared the movements of the fourteen healthy subjects/volunteers and nine patients with an inner ear viral infection. Based on the data results, we identified that the parameters can be used to evaluate postural stability in neurology.