A new Instrument to Quantify Dyskinesia In Patients with Parkinson's Disease

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Koronis Biomedical Technologies Corp. (KBT) proposes to create a new instrument to quantify dyskinesia in patients with Parkinson's disease, which currently affects 1.5 million Americans and is growing by an estimated 60,000 new cases each year. Recently there has been interest in quantifying dyskinesia, a side effect of the levodopa that is used to reduce Parkinsonian symptoms, for the evaluation of pharmacological and surgical interventions and as input to the levodopa dosing schedule. To date there has been a number of promising studies that have shown by making acceleration or gyroscopic measurement on various body segments that is it possible to develop algorithms that show good correlation to dyskinesias graded with either a modified abnormal involuntary movement (AIM) or the Goetz scale. The proposed instrumentation will eliminate the need to tether patients with wires, a shortcoming of current instruments, by using a low power, expandable, wireless network. The instrumentation will consist of two types of devices. The first device is a battery-powered, wireless, three axis gyroscope and accelerometer module whose volume is less than one cubic inch. The second device is a wearable wireless data recorder (shirt pocket size) that will collect the data from the modules. This will allow an ease of use not found in any other ambulatory system for motion capture. The expandable wireless network will enable simultaneous operation of several modules on different body segments. In Phase I, KBT will build a prototype, whose volume is not greater than one cubic inch, which will demonstrate the feasibility of developing modules that can synchronously measure and transmit their data. KBT will prove feasibility demonstrating the proposed system's performance is equal to or better than past research, which uses discrete wired sensors. In Phase II, KBT will complete the instrumentation development, experiment with detection algorithms, and validate the instrument and algorithms in clinical tests.