Hand Acceleration Research Articles

Quantifying Hand Motion Complexity in Simulated Sailing Using Inertial Sensors.

The control of hand movement during sailing is important for performance. To quantify the amount of regularity and the unpredictability of hand fluctuations during the task, the mathematical algorithm Approximate Entropy (ApEn) of the hand acceleration can be used. Approximate Entropy is a mathematical algorithm that depends on the combination of two input parameters including (1) the length of the sequences to be compared (m), and (2) the tolerance threshold for accepting similar patterns between two segments (r). The aim of this study is to identify the proper combinations of 'm' and 'r' parameter values for ApEn measurement in the hand movement acceleration data during sailing. Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) recorded acceleration data for both the mainsail (non-dominant) and tiller (dominant) hands across the X-, Y-, and Z-axes, as well as vector magnitude. ApEn values were computed for 24 parameter combinations, with 'm' ranging from 2 to 5 and 'r' from 0.10 to 0.50. The analysis revealed significant differences in acceleration ApEn regularity between the two hands, particularly along the Z-axis, where the mainsail hand exhibited higher entropy values (p = 0.000673), indicating greater acceleration complexity and unpredictability. In contrast, the tiller hand displayed more stable and predictable acceleration patterns, with lower ApEn values. ANOVA results confirmed that parameter 'm' had a significant effect on acceleration complexity for both hands, highlighting differing motor control demands between the mainsail and tiller hands. These findings demonstrate the utility of IMU sensors and ApEn in detecting nuanced variations in acceleration dynamics during sailing tasks. This research contributes to the understanding of hand-specific acceleration patterns in sailing and provides a foundation for further studies on adaptive sailing techniques and motor control strategies for both novice and expert sailors.

Time-independent relationship between digits closure velocity and hand transport acceleration during reach-to-grasp movements

Prehension movements in primates have been extensively studied for decades, and hand transport and hand grip adjustment are usually considered as the main components of any object reach-to-grasp action. Evident temporal patterns were found for the velocity of the hand during the transport phase and for the digits kinematics during pre-shaping and enclosing phases. However, such kinematics were always analysed separately in regard to time, and never studied in terms of dependence one from another. Nevertheless, if a reliable one-to-one relationship is proven, it would allow reconstructing the digit velocity (and position) simply by knowing the hand acceleration during reaching motions towards the target object, ceasing the usual dependence seen in literature from time of movement and distance from the target. In this study, the aim was precisely to analyse reach-to-grasp motions to explore if such relationship exists and how it can be formulated. Offline and real-time results not only seem to suggest the existence of a time-independent, one-to-one relationship between hand transport and hand grip adjustment, but also that such relationship is quite resilient to the different intrinsic and extrinsic properties of the target objects such as size, shape and position.

Hand Acceleration Time is a Valuable Ultrasonographic Tool in Hand Perfusion as Adjuvant Evaluation for Diagnosing Chronic Upper Limb Ischemia

Diagnosis of chronic upper limb ischemia is mainly clinical. Although hand perfusion can be evaluated by different noninvasive methods (e.g., digital-brachial index, digital pressures, oxygen saturation measurements, and plethysmography), these have not been standardized for the diagnosis of chronic upper limb ischemia. Initial reports suggested that the hand acceleration time (HAT) measured by duplex ultrasound could be a useful diagnostic tool. However, the HAT has neither been properly characterized nor validated. This study aimed to provide evidence that HAT is a sensitive diagnostic tool for chronic upper limb ischemia. We conducted a prospective, single-center, cross-sectional study with adult patients diagnosed with chronic upper limb ischemia and healthy adult volunteers without cardiovascular risk factors. Hand vascular duplex ultrasound and HAT measurement were performed in 4 artery locations: princeps pollicis artery, radialis indicis artery, first common digital palmar artery, and third common digital palmar artery. It was also measured in the ulnar and radial arteries. Descriptive and exploratory analyses were performed between patients and healthy volunteers. Thirty participants were included, being 15 patients (median [standard deviation] age: 51 [18] years; 47% women) and 15 healthy volunteers (median [standard deviation] age: 35 [10] years; 60% women). In total, 15 ischemic and 30 nonischemic hands were analyzed. Humeral artery stenosis/occlusion (n=6, 40.0%) and distal artery stenosis (n=5, 33.3%) were the main causes of ischemia. Median (interquartile range) HAT measurements were significantly different between patients and healthy volunteers in the 4 hand arterial locations, the radial artery, and ulnar artery: princeps pollicis artery: 164 (124-252) vs. 60 (40-88), P<0.001; radialis indicis artery: 176 (140-348) vs. 60 (36-80), P<0.001; first common digital palmar artery: 180 (92-320) vs. 64 (36-88), P<0.001; third common digital palmar artery: 180 (104-240) vs. 56 (44-92), P<0.001; radial artery: 156 (120-248) vs. 68 (55-76), P<0.001; and ulnar artery: 152 (76-220) vs. 61 (48-76), P<0.001. Vascular duplex ultrasound with HAT measurement seems to be an easy-access, sensitive diagnostic tool for chronic upper limb ischemia. HAT provides valuable information on hand perfusion and may be complementary to current noninvasive methods.

Differences in hand acceleration and digital reaction time between different skill levels of Counter Strike players

Due to the international prominence that eSports are acquiring, it is necessary to study their effects on human behavior. Specifically, the difference between the motor skills of players with different levels of experience. Therefore, the main objective of this work is to observe whether there are differences in hand accelerations (mouse handling) and digital reaction time between different skill levels. 21 subjects participated and were grouped according to their skill level (Low, Intermediate and Elite levels). The results showed greater hand accelerations in the Elite and Intermediate Skills players than Low-Skill players (p < 0.05). The hand-eye reaction time was lower in the Elite-Skill group than in the Low-Skill group (p = 0.008). Those with a Low-Skill had a higher dots per inch (DPI) than those with Intermediate and Elite Skills (p < 0.05). Elite-Skill players used larger screens than Low-Skill players (p = 0.034). The results suggest that players with better skills have better hand acceleration and shorter hand-eye reaction time.

Study on Gesture Recognition Method with Two-Stream Residual Network Fusing sEMG Signals and Acceleration Signals.

Currently, surface EMG signals have a wide range of applications in human-computer interaction systems. However, selecting features for gesture recognition models based on traditional machine learning can be challenging and may not yield satisfactory results. Considering the strong nonlinear generalization ability of neural networks, this paper proposes a two-stream residual network model with an attention mechanism for gesture recognition. One branch processes surface EMG signals, while the other processes hand acceleration signals. Segmented networks are utilized to fully extract the physiological and kinematic features of the hand. To enhance the model's capacity to learn crucial information, we introduce an attention mechanism after global average pooling. This mechanism strengthens relevant features and weakens irrelevant ones. Finally, the deep features obtained from the two branches of learning are fused to further improve the accuracy of multi-gesture recognition. The experiments conducted on the NinaPro DB2 public dataset resulted in a recognition accuracy of 88.25% for 49 gestures. This demonstrates that our network model can effectively capture gesture features, enhancing accuracy and robustness across various gestures. This approach to multi-source information fusion is expected to provide more accurate and real-time commands for exoskeleton robots and myoelectric prosthetic control systems, thereby enhancing the user experience and the naturalness of robot operation.

The Role of Object Physical Properties in Human Handover Actions: Applications in Robotics

Observing how humans interact with each other and how they manipulate objects, offer insight on interaction mechanisms and how these are influenced by the physical properties of the used objects. These insights can support a more informed design of robot controllers meant to manipulate objects in collaboration with humans. In this work we study human-to-human handovers of cups filled with various amount of liquid and textures, and investigate to which extent the manipulation strategy depends on: (i) the individual preference, (ii) whether the cup is filled with water or not, and (iii) the cup physical properties. An analysis of the human giver’s hand acceleration, velocity, and position during the handover of different cups under two liquid level conditions, allows to distinguish between careful and not-careful (normal) manipulation. We quantify to which extent the liquid level inside the cups influences the carefulness level of human manipulation. Lastly, our study reveals that the cups’ physical properties, such as fragility, breakability, and deformability, play a role in shaping the carefulness of the manipulation. We apply these findings to human-robot scenarios by developing a robot controller capable of detecting, in real-time, if the human is being more careful than normal, and adapting the robot’s approach of interaction accordingly. Additionally, we show that the detection of a careful manipulation, depending on the experimental context, may provide the robot with information concerning the human partner’s intention or need for (manipulation) assistance.

Screening for Subclavian Artery Stenosis

Introduction: Subclavian artery stenosis of &gt;50% has been linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular morbidity, complications after carotid interventions, and difficulty in managing hypertension. This has led to increased emphasis on screening for these lesions. In addition, these lesions may be associated with upper extremity symptoms including claudication and pain at rest. Methods: A retrospective review of patients who were referred over a 2-year period for arm pain in the setting of suspected or proven subclavian artery stenosis or occlusion was performed. This was compared to an unmatched cohort of patients who underwent carotid artery duplex with subclavian artery duplex for other reasons. Data included measuring the interbrachial systolic pressure difference (&gt;15 and &gt;20 mm Hg), arm-arm index, and hand acceleration time (HAT). Results: Among the172 patients studied, 48 had subclavian artery stenosis or occlusion and 26 of these had corresponding symptoms. Female gender ( P = .012), history of coronary intervention ( P = .007), hypertension ( P = .039), and arm-arm index of &lt;0.9 ( P = .0001) were significantly associated with subclavian artery stenosis or occlusion. A HAT of &gt;100 milliseconds was significantly associated with symptomatic subclavian artery stenosis or occlusion. Conclusions: An arm-arm index of &lt;0.9 is a useful tool for screening for subclavian artery stenosis. In patients with subclavian artery stenosis, HAT may be useful in confirming that the arm symptoms are due to this particular lesion.

Brief Submotor-Threshold Electrical Stimulation Applied Synchronously Over Wrist Flexor and Extensor Muscles does Not Suppress Essential Tremor, Independent of Stimulation Frequency.

Electrical stimulation of muscles below motoneuron threshold has shown potential as a low-cost and minimally invasive treatment for Essential Tremor (ET). Prior studies have stimulated wrist flexor and extensor muscles synchronously with diverging results, calling for further investigation. Also, prior studies have only used a narrow range of stimulation parameters, so stimulation parameters have not been optimized. Our purpose was to further investigate synchronous submotor stimulation and identify the effect of stimulation frequency on tremor suppression. We quantified the effect of brief, synchronous stimulation at 15 different frequencies from 10-150 Hz applied over wrist flexors and extensors on both tremor power and frequency in 20 ET patients. We compared tremor power and frequency from hand acceleration and sEMG between pre-, per-, and post-stimulation phases. Our stimulation paradigm did not result in significant tremor suppression or tremor frequency changes at any tested stimulation frequency, showing no significant interaction between phase and stimulation frequency for tremor power measured by either hand acceleration (p = 0.69) or sEMG (p = 0.07). Additionally, the effect of phase interacting with stimulation frequency on tremor frequency was statistically insignificant for acceleration (p = 0.64) and sEMG (p = 0.37). We conclude that brief synchronous submotor-threshold stimulation does not reduce tremor in ET patients, independent of stimulation frequency (from 10 to 150 Hz). Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that brief submotor-threshold stimulation suppresses tremor via reciprocal inhibition, which requires asynchronous stimulation. In contrast, it is hypothesized that synchronous stimulation might require longer stimulation durations to affect supraspinal tremor networks. We studied the effects of synchronous submotor electrical stimulation over wrist flexor and extensor muscles on Essential Tremor. Our results indicate that suppressing tremor with brief synchronous stimulation is ineffective. Based on recently hypothesized mechanisms of peripheral tremor suppression, we hypothesize that asynchronous stimulation or long-duration synchronous stimulation are more effective approaches to peripheral tremor suppression.

Leveraging Unlabelled Data in Multiple-Instance Learning Problems for Improved Detection of Parkinsonian Tremor in Free-Living Conditions.

Data-driven approaches for remote detection of Parkinson's Disease and its motor symptoms have proliferated in recent years, owing to the potential clinical benefits of early diagnosis. The holy grail of such approaches is the free-living scenario, in which data are collected continuously and unobtrusively during every day life. However, obtaining fine-grained ground-truth and remaining unobtrusive is a contradiction and therefore, the problem is usually addressed via multiple-instance learning. Yet for large scale studies, obtaining even the necessary coarse ground-truth is not trivial, as a complete neurological evaluation is required. In contrast, large scale collection of data without any ground-truth is much easier. Nevertheless, utilizing unlabelled data in a multiple-instance setting is not straightforward, as the topic has received very little research attention. Here we try to fill this gap by introducing a new method for combining semi-supervised with multiple-instance learning. Our approach builds on the Virtual Adversarial Training principle, a state-of-the-art approach for regular semi-supervised learning, which we adapt and modify appropriately for the multiple-instance setting. We first establish the validity of the proposed approach through proof-of-concept experiments on synthetic problems generated from two well-known benchmark datasets. We then move on to the actual task of detecting PD tremor from hand acceleration signals collected in-the-wild, but in the presence of additional completely unlabelled data. We show that by leveraging the unlabelled data of 454 subjects we can achieve large performance gains (up to 9% increase in F1-score) in per-subject tremor detection for a cohort of 45 subjects with known tremor ground-truth. In doing so, we confirm the validity of our approach on a real-world problem where the need for semi-supervised and multiple-instance learning arises naturally.

Potential Utility of Hand Acceleration Time in Quantifying the Degree of Malperfusion in Patients with Suspected Hemodialysis Access-Induced Digital Ischemia for CME Credit June 2023

Potential Utility of Hand Acceleration Time in Quantifying the Degree of Malperfusion in Patients with Suspected Hemodialysis Access-Induced Digital Ischemia for CME Credit June 2023

Potential Utility of Hand Acceleration Time in Quantifying the Degree of Malperfusion in Patients With Suspected Hemodialysis Access–Induced Distal Ischemia

Steal phenomenon after upper extremity hemodialysis access is a clinical diagnosis and consists of signs and symptoms ranging from pain during dialysis to tissue loss. Duplex ultrasonography of the access site and limb arterial perfusion often serves as an adjunct to the diagnosis but can have limitations and there is no specific duplex measurement that indicates that an intervention will be a success. We have used hand acceleration time (HAT) to assess perfusion in a number of trauma and shock cases and hypothesized that this approach could also be beneficial in assessing patients with hemodialysis access–induced distal ischemia (HAIDI), both for identifying patients who are candidates for intervention and to measure whether the intervention will be successful. Specifically, we hypothesized that a HAT &lt;100 ms is associated with normal hand perfusion. We performed a retrospective review of 4 patients with upper extremity arteriovenous fistulas who presented with pain and tissue loss involving the ipsilateral hand. In 2 cases, the tissue loss was not primarily due to steal (one due to skin slough from antibiotic reaction and the other due to focal calciphylaxis), and 2 patients had diffuse calcific disease of the forearm arteries. All 4 patients had antegrade flow in the forearm arteries and HAT &gt;100 ms. One patient with soft tissue sloughing was managed with banding of the proximal fistula, and 3 had proximalization of the fistula. All 4 achieved HAT &lt;100 ms and had resolution of symptoms. Hand acceleration time may be a valuable adjunct to determine whether intervention in the setting of hemodialysis access–induced distal ischemia HAIDI may assist with wound healing.

Objective Evaluation of Laparoscopic Experience Based on Muscle Electromyography and Accelerometry Performing Circular Pattern Cutting Tasks: A Pilot Study.

Purpose.The aim of this work is to present a new physical laparoscopy simulator with an electromyography (EMG)/accelerometry-based muscle activity recording system, EvalLap EMG-ACC, and perform objective evaluation of laparoscopic skills based on the quantification of muscle activity of participants with different levels of laparoscopic experience. Methods. EMG and ACC signals were obtained from 14 participants (6 experts, 8 medical students) performing circular pattern cutting tasks using a laparoscopic box trainer with the Trigno (Delsys Inc, Natick, MA) portable wireless system of 16 wireless sensors. Sensors were placed on the proximal and distal muscles of the upper extremities. Seven evaluation metrics were proposed and compared between skilled and novice surgeons. Results. The proximal and distal arm muscles (trapezius, deltoids, biceps, and forearms) were most active while executing laparoscopic tasks. Laparoscopic experience was associated with differences in EMG amplitude (), muscle activity (), hand acceleration (), user movement (), and muscle fatigue. For the cutting task, the deltoid, bicep, forearm EMG amplitude, and user movement significantly differed between experience groups. Conclusion. This pilot study demonstrates that different muscle groups are preferentially activated during laparoscopic tasks depending on the level of surgical experience. Expert surgeons showed less muscle activity compared with novices. EvalLap EMG-ACC represents a promising means to distinguish surgeons with basic cutting skills from those who have not yet developed these skills.

Rapid Change in the Direction of Hand Movement to Increase Hand Propulsion During Front Crawl Swimming.

This study aims to investigate the difference in hand acceleration induced by rapid changes in hand movement directions and propulsion between fast and slow groups of swimmers during front crawl swimming. Twenty-two participants, consisting of 11 fast and 11 slow swimmers, performed front crawl swimming at their maximal effort. Hand acceleration and velocity and the angle of attack were measured using a motion capture system. The dynamic pressure approach was used to estimate hand propulsion. In the insweep phase, the fast group attained significantly higher hand acceleration than the slow group in the lateral and vertical directions (15.31 [3.44]m·s-2 vs 12.23 [2.60]m·s-2 and 14.37 [1.70]m·s-2 vs 12.15 [1.21]m·s-2), and the fast group exerted significantly larger hand propulsion than the slow group (53 [5]N vs 44 [7]N). Although the fast group attained large hand acceleration and propulsion during the insweep phase, the hand velocity and the angle of attack were not significantly different in the 2 groups. The rapid change in hand movement direction could be considered in the technique of underwater arm stroke, particularly in the vertical direction, to increase hand propulsion during front crawl swimming.

Craft sciences meet neuroscience

Collaboration between disciplines is necessary when research questions cannot be answered within a single discipline. Joining of forces can produce results that neither discipline could provide alone. Here we exemplify collaboration between a ceramic craft researcher and three neuroscientists working in the field of human brain imaging. In our case study of clay throwing, the researcher–practitioner’s eye gaze, muscular activity and hand acceleration were recorded online, synchronized with video and thermal-camera recordings. We describe the experimental setting and discuss, besides the possible future interests in this kind of research, also the different levels of collaborative work between disciplines. We found that the monitoring methods worked well in the naturalistic setting in a ceramic studio, providing some new perspectives into the craft practice. For neuroscientists, clay throwing – involving accurate sensorimotor hand control, haptics and eye–hand coordination – provides an attractive setup to extend previous neuroscientific and behavioural findings in strictly controlled laboratory experiments into naturalistic situations. The applied monitoring devices might allow practitioner–researchers in crafts to become aware of unconscious steps in the making process. The applied methods could also help to accumulate general craft-making knowledge and build related theory.

Facing Your Fear in Immersive Virtual Reality: Avoidance Behavior in Specific Phobia.

Specific phobias are the most common anxiety disorder and are characterized by avoidance behavior. Avoidance behavior impacts daily function and is proposed to impair extinction learning. However, despite its prevalence, its objective assessment remains a challenge. To this end, we developed a fully automated experimental procedure using immersive virtual reality. The procedure contained a behavioral search, forced-choice, and an approach task with varying degrees of freedom and task relevance of the stimuli. In this study, we examined the sensitivity and feasibility of these tasks to assess avoidance behavior in patients with specific phobia. We adapted the tasks by replacing the originally conditioned stimuli with a spider and a neutral animal and investigated 31 female participants composed of 15 spider-phobic and 16 non-phobic participants. As the non-phobics were quite heterogeneous in terms of their Fear of Spiders Questionnaire (FSQ) scores, we subdivided them into six “fearfuls” that had elevated FSQ scores, and 10 “non-fearfuls” that had no fear of spiders. The phobics successfully managed to complete the procedure and showed consistent avoidance behavior across all behavioral tasks. Compared to the non-fearfuls, which did not show any avoidance behavior at all, the phobics looked at the spider much more often and clearly directed their body toward it in the search task. In the approach task, they hesitated most when they were close to the spider, and their difficulty to touch the spider was reflected in a strong increase in right hand acceleration changes. The fearfuls showed avoidance behavior depending on the tasks: strongest in the search task and weakest in the approach task. Additionally, we identified subjective valence ratings of the spider as the main influence on both objective avoidance behavior and subjective well-being after exposure, mediating the effect of the FSQ. In summary, the behavioral tasks are well suited to assess avoidance behavior in phobic participants and provide detailed insights into the process of avoidance.

A Possible Role for Arterial Duplex and Hand Acceleration Time in Diagnosing and Managing Shock for CME credit March 2022

A Possible Role for Arterial Duplex and Hand Acceleration Time in Diagnosing and Managing Shock for CME credit March 2022

A Possible Role for Arterial Duplex and Hand Acceleration Time in Diagnosing and Managing Shock

Shock represents a state when arterial perfusion is inadequate to supply the needs of cellular respiration, leading to anerobic metabolism, acidosis, and cell death. Although typically described in terms of blood pressure and heart rate, these measures can both lead to delayed recognition of shock and under appreciation of the severity of end-organ malperfusion. Recently, there has been increased interest in monitoring peripheral perfusion both to detect early shock and monitor the response to treatment. However, current methods are variable and, in some cases, require specialized equipment. We present a case in which duplex ultrasound assessment of peripheral palmar acceleration time identified a post-hemorrhagic shock state before it was clinically apparent. Bedside arterial duplex and hand acceleration time may provide a simple tool to assess the degree of shock and response to intervention.

Use of IMU in Differential Analysis of the Reverse Punch Temporal Structure in Relation to the Achieved Maximal Hand Velocity.

To achieve good performance, athletes need to synchronize a series of movements in an optimal manner. One of the indicators used to monitor this is the order of occurrence of relevant events in the movement timeline. However, monitoring of this characteristic of rapid movement is practically limited to the laboratory settings, in which motion tracking systems can be used to acquire relevant data. Our motivation is to implement a simple-to-use and robust IMU-based solution suitable for everyday praxis. In this way, repetitive execution of technique can be constantly monitored. This provides augmented feedback to coaches and athletes and is relevant in the context of prevention of stabilization of errors, as well as monitoring for the effects of fatigue. In this research, acceleration and rotational speed signal acquired from a pair of IMUs (Inertial Measurement Unit) is used for detection of the time of occurrence of events. The research included 165 individual strikes performed by 14 elite and national-level karate competitors. All strikes were classified as slow, average, or fast based on the achieved maximal velocity of the hand. A Kruskal–Wallis test revealed significant general differences in the order of occurrence of hand acceleration start, maximal hand velocity, maximal body velocity, maximal hand acceleration, maximal body acceleration, and vertical movement onset between the groups. Partial differences were determined using a Mann–Whitney test. This paper determines the differences in the temporal structure of the reverse punch in relation to the achieved maximal velocity of the hand as a performance indicator. Detecting the time of occurrence of events using IMUs is a new method for measuring motion synchronization that provides a new insight into the coordination of articulated human movements. Such application of IMU can provide additional information about the studied structure of rapid discrete movements in various sporting activities that are otherwise imperceptible to human senses.

HARMONY: A Human-Centered Multimodal Driving Study in the Wild

Effective shared autonomy requires a clear understanding of driver's behavior, which is governed by multiple psychophysiological and environmental variables. Disentangling this intricate web of interactions requires understanding the driver's state and behaviors in different real-world scenarios, longitudinally. Naturalistic Driving Studies (NDS) have shown to be an effective approach to understanding the driver's state and behavior in real-world scenarios. However, due to the lack of technological and computing capabilities, former NDS only focused on vision-based approaches, ignoring important psychophysiological factors such as cognition and emotion. The main objective of this paper is to introduce HARMONY, a human-centered multimodal naturalistic driving study, where driver's behaviors and states are monitored through (1) in-cabin and outside video streams (2) physiological signals including driver's heart rate and hand acceleration (IMU data), (3) ambient noise, light, and the vehicle's GPS location, and (4) music logs, including song features such as tempo. HARMONY is the first study that collects long-term naturalistic facial, physiological, and environmental data simultaneously. This paper summarizes HARMONY's goals, framework design, data collection and analysis, and the on-going and future research efforts. Through a presented case study, we first demonstrate the importance of longitudinal driver state sensing through using Kernel Density Estimation Methods. Second, we leverage the application of Bayesian Change Point detection methods to demonstrate how we can identify driver behaviors and responses to the environmental conditions by fusing psychophysiological information with features extracted from video streams.

Validation of MEMS Accelerometer for Rapid Hand Movement Measurement

Measuring and assessing the basic physical abilities of athletes is an important factor in the search for sporting talent and in training. Traditional methods are mainly based on knowledge of results, such as the time required to complete the given task. Various modern sensors allow us to obtain details of task execution that were previously unavailable, such as the trajectory of movement, thus giving us knowledge of performance. Our motivation is to use MEMS accelerometer to measure and analyze rapid hand movements, such as a standard tapping test, which is one of the most frequently used tests to assess the basic physical abilities. For this purpose, we use a specially designed wireless sensor device including an accelerometer with a dynamic range of ±16 g0 and validate its measurements with the professional optical motion capture system from Qualisys. In addition to the time required to perform the tapping task, we also compare the main characteristics of the hand acceleration, hand velocity and hand displacement signals acquired and derived by both measurement systems: MEMS accelerometer and optical motion capture system. The results show that the accelerometer measures the hand acceleration with sufficient accuracy to derive all other important hand movement parameters. Finally, we conclude that the accelerometer used in our tests, as well as devices with similar characteristics, are suitable for the accurate measurement of the tapping performance variables and can therefore be used in tapping tests.