Analysis of on-surface and in-air movement in handwriting of subjects with Parkinson's disease and atypical parkinsonism

The purpose of this paper is to emphasize the importance of in-air movement besides on-surface movement for handwriting analysis. The proposed method uses a classification of drawing healthy subjects and subjects with Parkinson's disease, according to their on-surface and in-air handwriting parameters during their writing on a graphical tablet. Experimental results on real data sets demonstrate that the highest accuracy of subject's classification was obtained by combining both on-surface and in-air kinematic parameters.