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The overall aim of this thesis was to develop and evaluate new knowledge- and data-driven methods for supporting treatment and providing information for better assessment of Parkinson’s disease (PD).

PD is complex and progressive. There is a large amount of inter- and intravariability in motor symptoms of patients with PD (PwPD). The current evaluation of motor symptoms that are done at clinics by using clinical rating scales is limited and provides only part of the health status of PwPD. An accurate and clinically approved assessment of PD is required using frequent evaluation of symptoms.

To investigate the problem areas, the thesis adopted the microdata analysis approach including the stages of data collection, data processing, data analysis, and data interpretation. Sensor systems including smartphone and tri-axial motion sensors were used to collect data from advanced PwPD experimenting with repeated tests during a day. The experiments were rated by clinical experts. The data from sensors and the clinical evaluations were processed and used in subsequent analysis.

The first three papers in this thesis report the results from the investigation, verification, and development of knowledge- and data-driven methods for quantifying the dexterity in PD. The smartphone-based data collected from spiral drawing and alternate tapping tests were used for the analysis. The results from the development of a smartphone-based data-driven method can be used for measuring treatment-related changes in PwPD. Results from investigation and verification of an approximate entropy-based method showed good responsiveness and test-retest reliability indicating that this method is useful in measuring upper limb temporal irregularity.

The next two papers, report the results from the investigation and development of motion sensor-based knowledge- and data-driven methods for quantification of the motor states in PD. The motion data were collected from experiments such as leg agility, walking, and rapid alternating movements of hands. High convergence validity resulted from using motion sensors during leg agility tests. The results of the fusion of sensor data gathered during multiple motor tests were promising and led to valid, reliable and responsive objective measures of PD motor symptoms.

Results in the last paper investigating the feasibility of using the Dynamic Time-Warping method for assessment of PD motor states showed it is feasible to use this method for extracting features to be used in automatic scoring of PD motor states.

The findings from the knowledge- and data-driven methodology in this thesis can be used in the development of systems for follow up of the effects of treatment and individualized treatments in PD.