Ambulatory Monitoring of Activities and Motor Symptoms in Parkinson's Disease

Abstract

Abstract-Ambulatory monitoring of motor symptoms in Parkinson's disease (PD) can improve our therapeutic strategies, especially in patients with motor fluctuations. Previously published monitors usually assess only one or a few basic aspects of the cardinal motor symptoms in a laboratory setting. We developed a novel ambulatory monitoring system that provides a complete motor assessment by simultaneously analyzing current motor activity of the patient (e.g., sitting, walking, etc.) and the severity of many aspects related to tremor, bradykinesia, and hypokinesia. The monitor consists of a set of four inertial sensors. Validity of our monitor was established in seven healthy controls and six PD patients treated with deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus. The patients were tested at three different levels of DBS treatment. Subjects were monitored while performing different tasks, including motor tests of the Unified PD Rating Scale (UPDRS). Output of the monitor was compared to simultaneously recorded videos. The monitor proved very accurate in discriminating between several motor activities. Monitor output correlated well with blinded UPDRS ratings during different DBS levels. The combined analysis of motor activity and symptom severity by our PD monitor brings true ambulatory monitoring of a wide variety of motor symptoms one step closer.

Signal features of surface electromyography in advanced Parkinson’s disease during different settings of deep brain stimulation

“…This study aimed to answer to that question. There have been few previous studies that have analyzed differences in the motor symptoms of PD between different settings of DBS by using kinematic measurements (O'Suilleabhain et al, 2003;Mera et al, 2011;Patel et al, 2009;Zwartjes et al, 2010). The number of patients in those studies has been quite low (N 6 6) and surface EMG has not been analyzed.…”

Motion Capture: From Radio Signals to Inertial Signals

“…To this end, many other subsystems have been studied and developed in order to provide simpler solutions to simpler scenarios. These systems still rely on the use of accelerometers, gyroscopes, magnetometers, and/or combinations of them for different types of biomedical applications [7,18,29,38,42].…”

A holistic approach to assess the feasability of telehealth for Parkinson's disease management

“…Lo et al (2012) have been working also in the automatic detection of dyskinesias, using three pairs of wireless inertial sensors, aimed at identify the onset of dyskinesia as the prescription drug wears off [310]. Zwartjes et al (2010) built an ambulatory monitoring system that simultaneously analyzes the motor activity of the patient (e.g., sitting, walking, etc.) and the severity of tremor, bradykinesia, and hypokinesia using a set of four inertial sensors [311].…”

“…Zwartjes et al (2010) built an ambulatory monitoring system that simultaneously analyzes the motor activity of the patient (e.g., sitting, walking, etc.) and the severity of tremor, bradykinesia, and hypokinesia using a set of four inertial sensors [311]. Kostikis et al (2011) work describes a smartphone-based method for detecting and quantifying the hand tremor associated with movement disorders using signals from the accelerometer and gyroscope embedded in the patient's phone [312].…”