Implementation of an iPhone for characterizing Parkinson's disease tremor through a wireless accelerometer application

Abstract

Parkinson's disease represents a chronic movement disorder, which is generally proportionally to age. The status of Parkinson's disease is traditionally classified through ordinal scale strategies, such as the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale. However, the application of the ordinal scale strategy inherently requires highly specialized and limited medical resources for interpretation. An alternative strategy involves the implementation of an iPhone application that enables the device to serve as a functional wireless accelerometer system. The Parkinson's disease tremor attributes may be recorded in either an effectively autonomous public or private setting, for which the resultant accelerometer signal of the tremor can be conveyed wireless and through email to a remote location for data post-processing. The initial testing and evaluation of the iPhone wireless accelerometer application for quantifying Parkinson's disease tremor successfully demonstrates the capacity to acquire tremor characteristics in an effectively autonomous environment, while potentially alleviating strain on limited and highly specialized medical resources.