Hand Dexterity: Design for Automatic Evaluation of Item 18 of MFM Scale

Abstract The assessment of skeletal muscle disorders is based on clinical evaluations. Multimedia technologies have been recently added to the traditional procedures, helping therapists to record, play back and analyze patient´s movements. Researches using tablets have demonstrated a potential applicability of such technology in the treatment of patients with certain neurological diseases, such as Parkinson’s. Even without a direct measurement of the movements of a hand, the patient’s dexterity can be assessed by the evaluation of the drawings performed on the tablet’s screen. To assist therapists in the evaluation of patients with Neuromuscular Diseases (NMD), in this work we implemented an automatic scoring interface on a tablet for the 18th item of the Motor Function Measure (MFM) scale, which is composed of 32 items. A tablet-based digital interface was initially proposed without automatic scoring, and 37 patients were evaluated in the traditional (paper-based) method and also in the new digital interface. The touches and drawings recorded were evaluated based on the scoring rules of the MFM protocol and the score values attributed by the therapists. The software developed is able to evoke an automatic score and also justifies it based on the movements carried out on the tablet screen, according to the MFM protocol.