Multi-Sensor Wearable Devices for Movement Monitoring in Parkinson's Disease

Abstract

Quantitative assessment of the motor symptoms in Parkinson's disease is the key to early treatment and essential for long term management over years. Wearable devices provide a new approach to quantify the motor symptoms in Parkinson's disease. Monitoring of the symptoms at multi-joints and body, on-line monitoring, quick analysis, low load and less restriction to the patients raise challenges to develop proper wearable device for patients monitoring in hospital. In this paper, multi-sensor wearable devices were developed to monitor and quantify the movement symptoms in Parkinson's disease. Five wearable sensors were used to record motion signals from patient's bilateral forearms, legs and waist. A local area network based on low power Wi-Fi technology was built for wide range and long period wireless data transmission. A software was developed for motion signal recording and analyzing. The size of each sensors was 52 mm×37 mm×13 mm and the weight was 26.3 g. The sensors were rechargeable and able to run 13 hours per charge. The wireless transmission radius was over 40 m. The wearable devices were tested in patients and normal subjects. The devices were reliable and with good temporal resolution and spatial resolution for movement monitoring in hospital.