Quantifying spatiotemporal gait parameters with hololens in healthy adults and people with Parkinson’s disease: Test-retest reliability, concurrent validity, and face validity

Microsoft’s HoloLens, a mixed-reality headset, provides, besides holograms, rich position data of the head, which can be used to quantify what the wearer is doing (e.g., walking) and to parameterize such acts (e.g., speed). The aim of the current study is to determine test-retest reliability, concurrent validity, and face validity of HoloLens 1 for quantifying spatiotemporal gait parameters. This was done in a group of 23 healthy young adults (mean age 21 years) walking at slow, comfortable, and fast speeds, as well as in a group of 24 people with Parkinson’s disease (mean age 67 years) walking at comfortable speed. Walking was concurrently measured with HoloLens 1 and a previously validated markerless reference motion-registration system. We comprehensively evaluated HoloLens 1 for parameterizing walking (i.e., walking speed, step length and cadence) in terms of test-retest reliability (i.e., consistency over repetitions) and concurrent validity (i.e., between-systems agreement), using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and Bland–Altman’s bias and limits of agreement. Test-retest reliability and between-systems agreement were excellent for walking speed (ICC ≥ 0.861), step length (ICC ≥ 0.884), and cadence (ICC ≥ 0.765), with narrower between-systems than over-repetitions limits of agreement. Face validity was demonstrated with significantly different walking speeds, step lengths and cadences over walking-speed conditions. To conclude, walking speed, step length, and cadence can be reliably and validly quantified from the position data of the wearable HoloLens 1 measurement system, not only for a broad range of speeds in healthy young adults, but also for self-selected comfortable speed in people with Parkinson’s disease.