Research of Upper Limb Biomechanics of Subjects with Parkinson‘s Disease and Essential Tremmor

Abstract

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a common neurodegenerative diseasewith symptoms of bradykinesia, rest tremor, rigidity and posturalinstability. PL is diagnosed by a clinician who qualitativelyevaluates patient’s visible symptoms during a physical exam. Inaddition, differentiating PD from essential tremor (ET) can bechallenging because their clinical symptoms are similar. Oncediagnosed, only qualitative tools such as the UPDRS are availableto monitor symptom severity and disease progression. Thepurpose of this study is to evaluate the changes of biomechanicalparameters of upper limb of subjects diagnosed either PD or ET,estimate differences and compare them with healthy subjectsin facilitate a creation of an additional instrumental clinical assessmentof PD subjects via biomechanical evaluation of motorfunction tool and develop methods and indices for differentiatingPD from ET.

Keywords

• Parkinson‘s disease, essential tremor, inertial sensors, accelerometer, gyroscope, biomechanics.