Assessing quality of movement in a child with cerebral palsy by using accelerometers

Children with cerebral palsy often use adaptive seating systems to access and operate assistive technology devices, such as speech generation and environment control devices, to communicate with surrounding persons and interact with electric appliances. Proper seating provided by occupational and physical therapists is crucial to inhibit abnormal movements, reflexes and tone, thereby can maximise the children's ability to function. More frequent seating assessments in daily living are necessary to maintain the seating. The goal of this study is to develop a quantitative method to assess the quality of movement while undertaking touch operations by using a set of portable accelerometers. We conducted an in-depth case study on a girl with cerebral palsy and evaluate agreements between the root mean square values of acceleration and the occupational therapist's subjective assessment. Our assessment and the OT's subjective assessment reached 69.3% agreement and the RMS values could detect the very little involuntary movement. The results suggest that the RMS values have the potential to be the quantitative evidence for seating.