In the following , we describe the development and validation of our approach step by step . Since we did not want to impose assumptions about what elements of movement of the body were more important , we simply collected movement data from the whole body and later used the data to find what was best suited for characterizing the disease , thereby avoiding observer bias . We used a wearable sensor ' suit ' ( a set of wristwatch - sized ( 4.7 × 3.0 × 1.3 cm ) sensors attached with Velcro to the body or clothing of the individuals ) that allowed us to capture the motion trajectory of all limbs and the body - from foot to hip , from hand to shoulder and from hip to head at a temporal resolution of 60 Hz . In the first step , we compared the joint kinematics of ADLs between healthy controls and patients with DMD and already found significant distinguishing elements : the distribution of joint angles across almost all body joints showed differences between DMD and controls ( Fig . 1b and Extended Data Fig . 1 ) . These quantitative differences are consistent with the qualitative descriptions of DMD in several ways . First , by inspecting the histograms of skeletal joint movement throughout ADLs ( Fig . 1b and Extended Data Fig . 1 for all major joints ) we saw reflection of hyperlordosis in the DMD posture : the right shifted distribution of the angles subtended by the hip joint with respect to healthy controls and correspondingly a stronger flexion ( left shift of the distribution ) of the knee joint . Similarly , the overall stiffer posture in DMD upper - body poses is reflected by the more contracted distribution of the DMD elbow joint angles compared to healthy controls . Second , the characteristic DMD Trendelenburg sign ( waddling gait ) is reflected in the joint angular velocity correlation matrix of ADLs ( Fig . 1c ) where across the lower extremities we saw less anticorrelation between joints moving in the sagittal plane ( knee and hip flexion ) and more correlation in the coronal plane ( sideways abduction of the hips ) that reflect waddling .