Biomedical instruments versus toys:a preliminary comparison of force platforms and the nintendo wii balance board - biomed 2011.

Biomedical sciences rely heavily on devices to acquire and analyze the physiological data needed to understand and model the biological processes of humans and animals. Therefore, the results of the investigations, clinical or academic, depend heavily on the instrumentation used. Unfortunately, all too often the users do not understand their instruments and end up compromising the results of their investigations by choosing an inadequate instrument or by not using it appropriately. One field where this is particularly apparent is posturography: the misconceptions about instruments are so widespread and deep that just recently there have been articles published in scientific journals suggesting the use of a “toy”, the Nintendo Wii Balance Board, instead of instrument grade force platform to acquire posturographic data. Characterizing the tools used for research becomes the first and probably the most important step in producing sound research and clinical results, and in the case of posturographic force platforms and the Nintendo Wii Balance Board a simple experimental setup can be used to find their characteristics. Furthermore, based on the preliminary results of this investigation, a mathematical formula can be used to predict the behavior of a posturographic tool, once its noise characteristics and “dead weight” response are known.