Wireless sensing system for long-time assistance in the Parkinson’s disease

A non-invasive wearable wireless sensing system for assisting patients affected by Parkinson’s Disease is proposed. It uses inertial sensors to recognize gait states and involuntary gait freezing. The system is designed for indoor and outdoor long-time monitoring and realizes an individual electronic diary useful for doctors for estimating better the stage of the disease and customizing the pharmacological therapy. Standard tests were performed on a noticeable number of patients. The system performances are the state-of-art in the detection of specific movement disorders of PD patients. The algorithm demonstrated its reliability and robustness respect to individual specific gait and postural behaviors.