COMPUTERIZED RHEUMATOMETER FOR CLASSIFYING PATIENTS USING GRIP STRENGTH INDICES.

A computerized rheumatometer has been developed to objectively assess grip strength (GS) indices of normals and patients with rheumatoid arthritis. The instrument consists of a hand grip bladder and an LVDT interfaced through an A/D (analog-to-digital) converter to an IBM-PC. Maximum pressure and rate of rise of pressure during the squeezing of the bladder were found to be the most sensitive indices to identify normal and patients' GS patterns. A Bayes classifier was developed to classify normal and patients' signatures of GS. In a clinical evaluation, a classification accuracy in excess of 90% was obtained.