A Quantitative, Digital Method to Analyze Human Figure Drawings as a Tool to Assess Body Representations Distortions in Stroke Patients

Isabella Martinelli; Stephanie Konik; Eleonora Guanziroli; Joseph Tharayil; Carolina Foglia; Makeda Minelik Alemu; Maria Colombo; Alessandro Specchia; Andrea Serino; Franco Molteni; Michela Bassolino

doi:10.1109/OJEMB.2023.3277711

A Quantitative, Digital Method to Analyze Human Figure Drawings as a Tool to Assess Body Representations Distortions in Stroke Patients

IEEE Open J Eng Med Biol. 2023 May 18:4:278-283. doi: 10.1109/OJEMB.2023.3277711. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ MySpace Lab, Department of Clinical NeurosciencesUniversity Hospital Lausanne (CHUV) 1011 Lausanne Switzerland.
² Villa Beretta Rehabilitation CenterValduce Hospital Como 22100 Costa Masnaga Italy.
³ Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, School of Life Science, Center for Neuroprosthetics and Brain Mind InstituteSwiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) 1015 Geneva Switzerland.
⁴ Blue Brain ProjectÉcole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) 1202 Geneva Switzerland.
⁵ School of Health SciencesHES-SO Valais-Wallis 1950 Sion Switzerland.
⁶ The Sense Innovation & Research Center 1011 Lausanne Switzerland.

Abstract

Objective: Human figure drawings are widely used in clinical practice as a qualitative indication of Body Representations (BRs) alterations in stroke patients. The objective of this study is to present and validate the use of a new app called QDraw for the quantitative analysis of drawings and to investigate whether this analysis can reveal distortions of BRs in chronic stroke patients.

Results: QDraw has proven to generate reliable data as compared to manual scoring and in terms of inter-rater reliability, as shown by the high correlation coefficients. Moreover, human figure drawings from chronic stroke patients demonstrated a distortion of upper limb perception, as shown by a significantly higher arm length asymmetry compared to legs, whereas no difference was found in healthy controls.

Conclusions: The present study supports the use of quantitative, digital methods (the QDraw app) to analyze human figure drawings as a tool to evaluate BRs distortions in stroke patients.

Keywords: Body representations; drawings; human figure; sensorimotor deficits; stroke.

Grants and funding

This work was supported in part by the INCOGNITO and Disclosure by a Foundation advised by CARIGEST (to A.S.), in part by Fondazione CARIPLO (to F.M.), in part by the Swiss National Science Foundation Professorship under Grant MYSPACE PP00P3_198907 (to A.S.), in part by Fondation Pierre Mercier pour la Science (to M.B.), and in part by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Ambizione Grant under Grant PZ00P1_161210 (to M.B.). (Isabella Martinelli, Stéphanie Konik, Franco Molteni, and Michela Bassolino contributed equally to this work.)