Technologies for Assessment of Motor Disorders in Parkinson's Disease: A Review

Sensors (Basel). 2015 Aug 31;15(9):21710-45. doi: 10.3390/s150921710.

Abstract

Parkinson's Disease (PD) is characterized as the commonest neurodegenerative illness that gradually degenerates the central nervous system. The goal of this review is to come out with a summary of the recent progress of numerous forms of sensors and systems that are related to diagnosis of PD in the past decades. The paper reviews the substantial researches on the application of technological tools (objective techniques) in the PD field applying different types of sensors proposed by previous researchers. In addition, this also includes the use of clinical tools (subjective techniques) for PD assessments, for instance, patient self-reports, patient diaries and the international gold standard reference scale, Unified Parkinson Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS). Comparative studies and critical descriptions of these approaches have been highlighted in this paper, giving an insight on the current state of the art. It is followed by explaining the merits of the multiple sensor fusion platform compared to single sensor platform for better monitoring progression of PD, and ends with thoughts about the future direction towards the need of multimodal sensor integration platform for the assessment of PD.

Keywords: Parkinson Disease (PD); Unified Parkinson Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS); audio sensor; multimodal sensor; wearable sensor.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Review

MeSH terms

  • Accelerometry
  • Biomedical Technology / methods*
  • Humans
  • Monitoring, Physiologic
  • Motor Disorders / complications
  • Motor Disorders / diagnosis*
  • Motor Disorders / physiopathology*
  • Parkinson Disease / complications
  • Parkinson Disease / diagnosis*
  • Parkinson Disease / physiopathology*