Passive Sensing of Gait and Medication-related Fluctuations in Parkinson’s Disease

Gait impairment is a hallmark symptom of Parkinson’s disease (PD). However, traditional clinical assessments cannot capture real-world motor fluctuations, as they are sparsely performed. This study was designed to test and validate the use of nearables and passive sensing technologies, including Kinect RGB-D cameras and ultra-wideband (UWB) radar, for continuous, objective assessment of gait fluctuations in PD within a home-like setting. Fifteen PD patients with mild symptoms and fourteen age-and sex-matched healthy controls (HC) performed 4-meter walking tasks in a living lab facility. Patients repeated the task during both “ON” and “OFF” states of their daily medication cycle. Gait features, including stride length, stride time, and gait speed, were extracted from Kinect, radar, and a ground-truth smart floor. Data were analyzed to evaluate inter-sensor agreements and detect group-level differences. Stride time demonstrated the highest agreement between devices ( r =0.903), while stride length showed weaker agreement ( r =0.779), with Kinect tending to overestimate. Despite lower agreement, stride length from both Kinect and radar successfully distinguished PD OFF from HC (camera q =0.020; radar q =0.005) and radar was able to further differentiate ON and OFF states ( q =0.020). Neither device differentiated PD ON from HC, indicating medication reduced observable gait differences. This study demonstrates that passive, contact-free sensing technologies such as depth cameras and UWB radars can effectively monitor gait in PD within naturalistic environments. While some spatial metrics, like stride length, show device discrepancies, both systems reliably capture gait patterns and medication-dependent changes, supporting their use for longitudinal, real-world monitoring of Parkinson’s motor symptoms.