Preliminary Wearable and Locally Wireless Systems for Quantification of Parkinson’s Disease and Essential Tremor Characteristics

Inertial sensor systems, such as accelerometers, were proposed for the monitoring of human movement before their technology capability was sufficient for application to the human body. With sufficient progressive evolution, these sensors have been demonstrated for quantifying neurodegenerative movement disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease and Essential tremor. Initial success was demonstrated for matters, such as medication efficacy and symptom status. Their further recent evolution has elucidated utility regarding the preliminary context of wearable and locally wireless systems. A novel configuration was proposed for the use of wearable and wireless accelerometer systems to provide quantified feedback to establish a strategy for acquiring optimal parameter settings for a deep brain stimulation system. Further demonstration of wearable and locally wireless inertial sensor systems for objectively quantifying neurodegenerative movement disorder tremor symptoms has been provided with local wireless connectivity to a proximally situated personal computer for post-processing. These developments establish the foundation for the extension to wearable and wireless inertial sensor systems with considerable accessibility to the Internet, such as provided by the smartphone. This foundation sets the precedence for the emergence of Network Centric Therapy regarding the domain of quantifying neurodegenerative movement disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease and Essential tremor.