Article

Movement variation constitutes a crucial feature of infant motor development.
Reduced variation of spontaneous infant movements, i.e. stereotyped movements,
may indicate severe neurological deficit at an early stage.
Hitherto evaluation
of movement variation has been mainly restricted to subjective assessment based
on observation. This article introduces a method for quantitative assessment
yielding an objective definition of stereotyped movements which may be used for
the prognosis of neurological deficits such as cerebral palsy (CP). Movements of
3-month-old infants were recorded with an electromagnetic tracking system
facilitating the analysis of joint angles of the upper and lower limb. A
stereotypy score based on dynamic time warping has been developed describing
movements which are self-similar in multiple degrees of freedom. For clinical
evaluation, this measure was calculated in a group of infants at risk for
neurological disorders (n=54) and a control group of typically developing
children (n=21) on the basis of spontaneous movements at the age of 3 months. The
stereotypy score was related to outcome at the age of 24 months in terms of CP
(n=10) or no-CP (n=53). Using the stereotypy score of upper limb movements CP
cases could be identified with a sensitivity of 90% and a specificity of 96%. The
corresponding score of the leg movements did not allow for valid discrimination
of the groups. The presented stereotypy feature is a promising candidate for a
marker that may be used as a simple and noninvasive quantitative measure in the
prediction of CP. The method can be adopted for the assessment of infant movement
variation in research and clinical applications.
CI - Copyright (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Langue : ANGLAIS