Project

Parkinson’s Disease Rehabilitation Using Rhythmic Auditory Stimulation

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disease that mainly affects the motor system. PD has no known causes, no permanent cure, and limited treatment options. Early symptoms are tremors, rigidity, slowness of movement, and difficulty with walking. Due to these movement impairments, people suffering from PD have different gait characteristics than healthy subjects. PD patients have significantly lower velocity, step length, and stride length when compared to healthy controls. Rhythmic auditory stimulation (RAS) is used in Parkinson’s disease rehabilitation. RAS is a type of therapy that uses rhythmic sounds (music or metronome beats) to help people with PD move more easily and effectively. Developing effective non-medical interventions to relieve gait and balance impairments would represent a great advancement in Parkinson’s disease therapy. PD patients usually face significant challenges in completing the rehabilitation programs effectively without a specialised gait laboratory or after discharge from the hospital. Remote gait monitoring is possible using an inertial measurement unit and vertical ground reaction force sensors. It will reduce the cost of the rehabilitation process and help doctors to check the improvement of patients remotely. In this study, we aim to develop a home-based gait monitoring system and data-driven approach for personalization in RAS therapeutic interventions.

Future Works

Develop a RAS based remote gait monitoring system using sensors for Parkinson disease patient rehabilitation.