Deteriorated hand movement of diabetic patients can be linked to a non-properly functioning nervous system. Therefore, in this paper, a setup is proposed to measure and analyze such deterioration in the form of skew (vertical deviation) - resulting from hand motion - as well as its duration. A personal computer equipped with a touchpad is used to enable the user to draw a pre-specified horizontal line on the computer screen. The skew of the hand from the prescribed track, and the time of motion while drawing this line are digitally measured based on the X and Y coordination of the position of the index finger on the pad and the duration of the movement made. At the same time, the system clock values were continuously recorded for each point of the movement made. In this paper, kinematics of hand movements for diabetics compared to normal subjects is investigated in details. The results reveal that the mean values of skew are found at 2.7 mm; i.e., standard deviation (SD) of 2.2 mm for diabetic subjects compared to 0.92 mm (SD of 0.43 mm) for controls (healthy subjects). With a mean value of 6.03 s (SD of 3.02 s) for diabetic subjects, compared to 4.38 s (SD of 1.75 s) for controls, the time of motion is also found to be affected by the state of health (diabetic or non-diabetic). The results also indicate significant correlation between a skew value higher than 1.8 mm and diabetes which can be used as an indicator for diagnosing the disease. Finally, the obtained results show that the proposed setup and the followed procedure can be successfully utilized for diabetes diagnosis.
Key words: Diabetic neuropathy; Kinematics; Skew; Movement time; Diabetes.
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