The Parkinson’s patient often suffers from involuntary seizures, that are unnoticeable to him, but tire his muscles and cause great pain.
The appearance of the tremor is random. Muscles’ behaviour is very similar to that, as they were intensively used during some kind of hard work.
Parkinson’s patient must have a periodic physiotherapeutic treatment, in order to relief the pain, caused by the cramped muscles.
Patients can significantly improve quality of life, if were given some kind of an “alarm”, when the tremor starts. Consequently, the unwanted tremor can be stopped and the seizures of the muscles can be prevented
Project’s Goals
Design a portable low-power system which:
- Identifies presence of tremor.
- Analyzes vibrations and detects a Parkinson’s tremor.
- Notifies the user about appearing of unwanted tremor (“alarm”).
- Enables better tracking of the disease by storing data, describing specific tremor’s appearance, like:
- Starting time
- Duration
- Strength (amplitude)
- Frequency
- Runs on a daily basis, powered by rechargeable battery, that is recharged by the solar cells or by connection to the external power source. Low battery indicator alerts user when battery is low.
- Designing PCB and appropriate packaging, resulting in a small low-power Parkinson Mobile Device (PMD), like an ordinary wrist watch.
- Creating a unique set of software for PC and PMD, which enables performing of the following tasks:
- Downloading data from portable device.
- Performing of the data processing on downloaded data and displaying the appropriate statistics on PC.
- Creating database and storing it for the further inspection by the patient / physician.