Executive Summary : | Filling a glass of water, drinking hot tea or coffee or even water, communicating by phone or starting to walk when the red light turns green in a crosswalk, writing an emotional note in diary etc. are simple and basic requirement in our common day-to-day life; but very difficult to achieve for some people living with a neurodegenerative disease like PD, as these tasks involve coordination between a large number of muscles. Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disease worldwide. This work will start with a dedicated literature survey will be conducted to gain further depth of understanding and knowledge on this research area and critical evaluation of a concept, school of thought, or ideas pertaining to the research question in investigation. Motor symptoms of PD are typically assessed by neurologists using clinical scales such as Unified PD rating scale (UPDRS), based on subjective assessment collected from the response from caregivers or the patients themselves, which need to be collected, which can act as a precursor for parameter identification. However, these sources have various limitations concerning validity, inter-rater variability, and continuous monitoring. In addition, the symptoms are often pair up with other neurodegenerative parameters, and even the PD symptoms are varying subject to subject and may occur at different age. Thus, these facts lead to nearly 24% are incorrect PD detection. Researcher have suggested that electronic sensor-based systems can facilitate remote, long-term and repeated symptom assessments in home set-up and can able to capture the symptom fluctuations more accurately during patient’s day-to-day activities and also can be a cost-effective solution with patient’s hospitalization costs. The aim of this project is to design and develop a tool for early detection of PD. In this project, different biomarkers will be tested for better estimation of PD. As most of earlier reported results are based on the experiments conducted in a standardized and controlled clinical setting, reducing generalizability and limiting an interpretation with respect to applicability of these measures to an at-home self-administered setting, therefore, an effort will be made to identify new task experiments for detection of PD like handwriting, spiral drawing, tapping feet/finger etc. Work will also conduct to explore new biomarkers like HR dynamics, neurogenic Orthostatic hypotension etc. Once the biomarkers are identified, data will be analyzed for frequency estimation, dimensionality reduction and classification. A methodology is proposed, which will be tested along with other comparable adopted methodologies. This project will also focus to design and develop tremor compensation assistive device for these patients which can reduce/dampen this tremor and help the people with PD better manage their daily activities, stay safe, and maintain independence particularly as the disease progresses. |