Computer-Based Assessment of Bradykinesia, Akinesia and Rigidity in Parkinson's Disease

An increasingly aging population fuels the need for appropriate care and services for the elderly and disabled. Age related diseases such as Parkinson's Disease (PD), require close monitoring and assessment. A home-based assessment tool, which collects information on people's hand and finger movements, has been developed. It is intended that movement difficulties such as bradykinesia and rigidity can be identified through the use of this tool. Remote monitoring of this home based tool has the potential to decrease the number of clinic/hospital visits a person with PD requires. Two groups of 10 people took part in an evaluation of this system. One group were persons with PD and the other were without PD. Results showed that 70% of the control group completed the tool within 30 seconds compared to only 30% in the PD group. The tool endeavours to make the assessment of PD more objective.

[1]  Chris D. Nugent,et al.  Ageing People in Ireland: A Survey Perspective on Technology in the Home , 2006 .

[2]  James D. Foley,et al.  Supporting adaptive interfaces in a knowledge-based user interface environment , 1993, IUI '93.

[3]  C. Nugent,et al.  A review of assistive technologies for people with Parkinson's disease. , 2009, Technology and health care : official journal of the European Society for Engineering and Medicine.

[4]  A. Salarian,et al.  An ambulatory system to quantify bradykinesia and tremor in Parkinson's disease , 2003, 4th International IEEE EMBS Special Topic Conference on Information Technology Applications in Biomedicine, 2003..

[5]  K. Akazawa,et al.  Estimation of UPDRS Finger Tapping Score by using Artificial Neural Network for Quantitative Diagnosis of Parkinson's disease , 2007, 2007 6th International Special Topic Conference on Information Technology Applications in Biomedicine.