Assessment of finger dexterity through the DIGITS joint tracking web application—An evaluation study with comparison to the nine-hole pegboard test

Background

Hand dexterity is an important clinical marker after hand surgery as it can greatly impact one’s ability to perform their day-to-day activities. With the increased focus on remote patient monitoring after hand surgery, new technologies are required to remotely monitor hand dexterity.

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to identify dexterity outcomes using the web application “DIGITS” and compare these outcomes to the nine-hole-pegboard test (NHPT).

Study Design

Cross-sectional observational study.

Methods

This was a two-part study with a pilot of our remote dexterity design using DIGITS followed by a validation study comparing DIGITS to a gold-standard metric of dexterity, NHPT. The pilot study recruited 42 healthy subjects between the ages of 18–65 to perform a remote finger tapping exercise using DIGITS. The second part of the study included 50 subjects between the ages of 18–65. Participants completed a demographic questionnaire and then completed three finger tapping sequences for 20 seconds using DIGITS and three trials of the NHPT with each hand. Correlational analyses were done to compare the DIGITS dexterity test with the NHPT.

Results

Four outcome measures to assess dexterity were identified, which included (1) total sequences completed in 20 seconds, (2) time to complete 10 sequences, (3) average frequency per sequence, and (3) sequence accuracy. Significant negative correlations were found with the NHPT and total sequences completed in 20 seconds in both dominant and non-dominant hand trials. Additionally, significant negative correlations were found between the NHPT and the time to complete 10 sequences and average frequency in the non-dominant hand trials.

Conclusions

This study shows promising results for the use of DIGITS as a remote measure of hand dexterity. The total number of sequences completed significantly correlates with the NHPT and should be further explored in representative patient populations.