BACKGROUND
Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) is an entrapment neuropathy that occurs due to compression of the median nerve as it passes through the carpal tunnel at the wrist joint. The initial symptoms are numbness and sensory disturbance from the thumb to the ring finger. As CTS becomes severe, thumb motion is reduced, which affects manual dexterity. Patients begin to experience symptoms such as difficulties in writing.
OBJECTIVE
We developed a screening method for CTS using a tablet and stylus, focusing on writing motion, and verified its accuracy.
METHODS
We recruited 33 patients with CTS and 31 healthy volunteers for this study. The patients in the CTS group were diagnosed with CTS by hand surgeons in the orthopedic outpatient clinic based on physical examination and nerve conduction studies. We developed a tablet app to measure the stylus trajectory and pressure of the stylus tip when drawing a spiral on a tablet screen using a stylus and subsequently used these data as training data to predict the participants as non-CTS or CTS using a support vector machine.
RESULTS
Non-CTS and CTS were classified with 82% sensitivity and 71% specificity. The area under the curve was 0.81.
CONCLUSIONS
We proposed a CTS screening method that focuses on manual dexterity. This method can facilitate the screening for potential patients with CTS and provide a quantitative assessment of CTS.