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A critical symptom of Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the occurrence of Freezing of Gait (FOG), an episodic disorder that causes frequent falls and consequential injuries in PD patients. There are various auditory, visual, tactile, and other types of stimulation interventions that can be used to induce PD patients to escape FOG episodes. In this article, we describe a low cost wearable system for non-invasive gait monitoring and external delivery of superficial vibratory stimulation to the lower extremities triggered by FOG episodes. The intended purpose is to reduce the duration of the FOG episode, thus allowing prompt resumption of gait to prevent major injuries. The system, based on an Android mobile application, uses a tri-axial accelerometer device for gait data acquisition. Gathered data is processed via a discrete wavelet transform-based algorithm that precisely detects FOG episodes in real time. Detection activates external vibratory stimulation of the legs to reduce FOG time. The integration of detection and stimulation in one low cost device is the chief novel contribution of this work. We present analyses of sensitivity, specificity and effectiveness of the proposed system to validate its usefulness.

The current diagnosis of Parkinson's disease (PD) is based on a subjective assessment by the specialist. The monitoring of the tremor that presents in the hand index fingers in a patient with Parkinson's is one of the most important parameters to diagnose the evolution of the disease in an objective manner. This research analyze the tremor in the hand index fingers of patients with PD with medication and without medication. A sensor based in a triaxial accelerometer was used to acquire the data produced by the acceleration changes of parkinsonian tremor in the case of three activities: postural tremor, action tremor and rest tremor. Acquired data were processed in Matlab; the data were filtered and the spectral power density (PSD) was estimated with the Burg periodogram. It has been verified that the system presented in this article can accurately detect the parkinsonian tremors of the patients evaluated, additionally has been found that with the medication the tremors do not disappear completely, these remained with the same frequencies of PD but with a very small amplitude.

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