Inertial Sensing to Determine Movement Disorder Motion Present before and after Treatment

Abstract

There has been a lot of interest in recent years in using inertial sensors (accelerometers and gyroscopes) to monitor movement disorder motion and monitor the efficacy of treatment options. Two of the most prominent movement disorders, which are under evaluation in this research paper, are essential tremor (ET) and Parkinson’s disease (PD). These movement disorders are first evaluated to show that ET and PD motion often depict more (tremor) motion content in the 3–12 Hz frequency band of interest than control data and that such tremor motion can be characterized using inertial sensors. As well, coherence analysis is used to compare between pairs of many of the six degrees-of-freedom of motions under evaluation, to determine the similarity in tremor motion for the various degrees-of-freedom at different frequency bands of interest. It was quite surprising that this coherence analysis depicts that there is a statistically significant relationship using coherence analysis when differentiating between control and effectively medicated PD motion. The statistical analysis uncovers the novel finding that PD medication induced dyskinesia is depicted within coherence data from inertial signals. Dyskinesia is involuntary motion or the absence of intended motion, and it is a common side effect among medicated PD patients. The results show that inertial sensors can be used to differentiate between effectively medicated PD motion and control motion; such a differentiation can often be difficult to perform with the human eye because effectively medicated PD patients tend to not produce much tremor. As well, the finding that PD motion, when well medicated, does still differ significantly from control motion allows for researchers to quantify potential deficiencies in the use of medication. By using inertial sensors to spot such deficiencies, as outlined in this research paper, it is hoped that medications with even a larger degree of efficacy can be created in the future.

Pathophysiology of Swallowing Dysfunction in Parkinson Disease and Lack of Dopaminergic Impact on the Swallow Function and on the Effect of Thickening Agents

“…OD affects health and quality of life and interferes with the oral intake of medication in patients with PD [ 9 , 10 ], even in early stages of the disease. These patients are therefore often at risk of malnutrition, dehydration, aspiration pneumonia, and increased mortality [ 1 , 11 ].…”

Quantitative Assessment of Head Tremor in Patients with Essential Tremor and Cervical Dystonia by Using Inertial Sensors

“…On the other hand, filtering of tremor signals acquired by accelerometers for real-time applications is presented in [9], where the authors propose two improved algorithms by considering that the tremor contains multiple dominant frequencies over the entire signal duration. The possibility to use inertial sensors for monitoring of the effect of medication on Parkinson’s disease patients has been presented in the work of Teskey et al [10]. In that work, the authors show that the motion due to Parkinson Disease, when a patient is medicated, does still differ significantly from control motion to allow researchers to quantify potential deficiencies due to use of medication.…”

Feature visualization and classification for the discrimination between individuals with Parkinson’s disease under levodopa and DBS treatments

“…The primary symptoms of PD are tremors (oscillatory movements), bradykinesia (slow movement) and rigidity (increased muscular tone) [3–9]. PD can have significant negative impacts in several aspects of patients’ quality of life, including those associated with physical and social functioning, such as affecting patient’s ability to drink, eat and write [10–12]. …”