%0 Journal Article %T Validity of the Nintendo Wii balance board for the assessment of balance measures in the Functional Reach Test %J IEEE transactions on neural systems and rehabilitation engineering %D 2018 %A Mengarelli, Alessandro %A Cardarelli, Stefano %A Strazza, Annachiara %A Di Nardo, Francesco %A Fioretti, Sandro %A Verdini, Federica %V 26 %N 7 %P 1400-1406 %X The functional reach test (FRT) is widely used for assessing dynamic balance stability in elderly and pathological subjects. Force platforms (FPs) represent a fundamental part of the instrumented FRT experimental setup due to the central role of center-of-pressure (COP) displacement in FRT analysis. Recently, the nintendo wii balance board (NBB) has been suggested as a low-cost and reliable device for ground reaction force and COP measurement in poorly dynamic motor tasks. Therefore, this paper aimed to compare NBB-COP data with those obtained from a laboratory-grade platform during FRT. Data from 48 healthy subjects were simultaneously acquired from both devices. FP-COP and NBB-COP trajectories showed a remarkable correlation in both directions ( ) and low root-mean-square error values (1.14 ± 0.88 mm and 0.55 ± 0.28 mm for anterior-posterior and medial-lateral direction). Fixed biases between COP-based parameters did not exceed 2% of the FP outcomes with high consistency throughout the present measurement range (ICC consistency always >0.950). Only the COP mean velocity exhibited a tendency toward proportional errors, which can be adjusted by a calibration of NBB data.

FINDINGS of this paper confirmed the NBB validity for COP measurement in a widely used motor task as the functional reach, supporting the feasibility of NBB in research scenarios.

Language: en

%G en %I IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) %@ 1534-4320 %U http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TNSRE.2018.2843884