Testing of Motor Coordination in Degenerative Neurological Diseases

Abstract

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive movement disorder caused by the death of dopamine-producing cells in the midbrain. PD is the most prevalent movement disorder of the central nervous system and affects more than 6.3 million people in the world. The changes in the motor functions of patients are not easy to be clearly and on-time observed by the clinicians and to make the most well-informed decisions for the treatment. The aim of this paper is the monitoring PD by designing, developing, and evaluating a prototype mobile App using a pressure pen, which collects quantitative and objective information about PD patients, thus allowing clinicians to understand better and make assumptions about the severity and the stage of Parkinson’s disease. This study presents a dynamic spiral test that can only be performed with tablet and pen pressure. Furthermore, the handwriting samples by PD patients and healthy controls individuals are collected by a computerized system, and the measurements of Spiral Deviation, Total Time, and Pen Pressure are processed. The results showed an accurate evaluation of the stage of Parkinson’s disease. Thus, the clinician may use the proposed PD telemonitoring system as a screening test, storing the history of all the patient’s measurements.

The Perspective of mHealth in the Self-Assessment of the Parkinson’s Disease. Comment on Kalafati et al. Testing of Motor Coordination in Degenerative Neurological Diseases. Healthcare 2022, 10, 1948

“…Regarding the research article “ Maria Kalafati, Athanasios Kakarountas and Elisabeth Chroni , Testing of Motor Coordination in Degenerative Neurological Diseases”, published in Healthcare [ 1 ], I found that this is a stimulating work in the field of Biomedical Engineering with interesting clinical perspectives.…”

“…As you highlighted in the study [ 1 ]: Parkinson’s disease (a progressive movement disorder caused by the death of dopamine-producing cells in the midbrain) is the most prevalent movement disorder of the central nervous system and affects more than 6.3 million people in the world; Changes in the motor functions of patients are not easy to be clearly observed on time by the clinicians and to make the most well-informed decisions for the treatment; It is important in light of points (1, 2) to develop bioengineering methods integrated with modern mobile technologies, capable of (a) being easily used by patients with Parkinson’s Disease (PD) and (b) providing useful parameters to allow decisions based on quantitative data within the PD. …”

“…Your study [ 1 ] details the designing, developing, and evaluating of a mobile app using a pressure pen, which collects quantitative and objective information about PD patients, thus allowing clinicians to understand better and make assumptions about the severity and the stage of Parkinson’s disease. The app described by you allows the execution of a dynamic spiral test through a pen pressure and obtaining a series of important parameters such as Spiral Deviation, Total Time, and Pen Pressure through a computerized system.…”

“…I believe that mHealth today allows, as you have also highlighted [ 1 ], new opportunities in PD monitoring/assessment.…”

Bridging the Gap: Exploring Opportunities, Challenges, and Problems in Integrating Assistive Technologies, Robotics, and Automated Machines into the Health Domain

“…To explore the opportunities, challenges, issues, and bottlenecks of integrating these tools (alone or interconnected) into the domain, this Special Issue [10] was initiated in May 2022, and was subsequently completed in January 2023. This Special Issue collected 17 contributions plus an editorial [1,[11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27], and covered a wide range of topics, including:…”