Development and Pilot Testing of a Novel Electromechanical Device to Measure Wrist Rigidity in Parkinson’s Disease

Zito, Giuseppe Angelo; Gerber, Stephan Moreno; Urwyler, Prabitha; Shamsollahi, Mohammad Javad; Pal, Natassja; Benninger, David; Nef, Tobias (July 2018). Development and Pilot Testing of a Novel Electromechanical Device to Measure Wrist Rigidity in Parkinson’s Disease. International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), 2018, pp. 4885-4888. IEEE 10.1109/EMBC.2018.8513422

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Quantitative assessment of the muscle tone is important when studying patients with neurological disorders such as Parkinson's disease (PD). For the assessment of therapeutic progress, quantitative and objective outcome measures are needed. This article presents a novel electromechanical device to monitor the quantitative rigidity of the wrist joint against passive movement. The novel device is equipped with an electrical motor to move the wrist joint in a flexion-extension manner with different velocity profiles. The accuracy of the device was measured in terms of position, velocity and torque accuracy. The feasibility of the measurement procedure was tested in a pilot study with four PD patients and 12 healthy controls (HC), at velocities of 10 °/s,50 °/s, and 100 °/s. {The position and velocity of the developed device were (0.005 ± 0.105)° and (0.734 ±0.276) °/s, unloaded, and (0.003 ± 0.113) ° and (0.013 ± 0.038) °/s, loaded with a relaxed arm, respectively. The torque accuracy was (15.029 ± 2.235) mNm. The comparison of the median rigidity between the PD patients and HC showed significant differences at all tested velocities, during both flexion and extension movements. This device proved to have sufficient accuracy and sensitivity to precisely measure the interaction torque at the wrist joint and to differentiate PD rigidity from normal muscle tone. The device, thus provides a quantitative and objective measure of rigidity in PD.

Item Type:

Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Division/Institute:

04 Faculty of Medicine > Department of Head Organs and Neurology (DKNS) > Clinic of Neurology
04 Faculty of Medicine > Pre-clinic Human Medicine > Institute for Surgical Technology & Biomechanics ISTB [discontinued]
10 Strategic Research Centers > ARTORG Center for Biomedical Engineering Research
10 Strategic Research Centers > ARTORG Center for Biomedical Engineering Research > ARTORG Center - Gerontechnology and Rehabilitation

Graduate School:

Graduate School for Cellular and Biomedical Sciences (GCB)

UniBE Contributor:

Zito, Giuseppe Angelo, Gerber, Stephan Moreno, Urwyler-Harischandra, Prabitha, Shamsollahi, Mohammad Javad, Nef, Tobias

Subjects:

500 Science > 570 Life sciences; biology
600 Technology > 610 Medicine & health
600 Technology > 620 Engineering

ISSN:

1558-4615

ISBN:

978-1-5386-3646-6

Publisher:

IEEE

Language:

English

Submitter:

Angela Amira Botros

Date Deposited:

07 Dec 2018 10:53

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 15:21

Publisher DOI:

10.1109/EMBC.2018.8513422

PubMed ID:

30441438

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.122007

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/122007

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