Parkinson's disease is a chronic neurological disorder affecting hundreds of thousands of Americans. The current best practice for assessment of this disease is a clinical examination and subjective rating using the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale. Such ratings are coarse scaled, subject to rater bias, and costly. Instruments which provide objective measurements of disease state can eliminate rater bias, provide repeatable data, and increase the frequency and responsiveness of subject assessments, expediting the validation of new therapies and treatments. This thesis describes the design and implementation of a battery of bio-mechanical devices suitable for clinical and in home use, including descriptions of the instruments and the functionality of the data acquisition software, as well as the overall system used for data collection. A data analysis algorithm is fully described, and descriptive statistics of pilot data from twenty two subjects are reported. These statistics show promising correlations of time duration metrics with the motor subsection of the UPDRS, as well as good responsiveness to dopaminergic intervention. Data also suggests that these devices have an advantage over previously described devices in the ability to record the full range of motion in standard assessment tasks, thereby providing additional metrics related to hesitations and halts in prescribed movements.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:pdx.edu/oai:pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu:open_access_etds-1082 |
| Date | 01 January 2010 |
| Creators | Katz, Edward A. |
| Publisher | PDXScholar |
| Source Sets | Portland State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Dissertations and Theses |
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