Quantitative symptom discrimination of Parkinson's disease by chaotic approach

In this paper, the waveforms measured by the strain gauge iri the tapping t est oil a number of healthy subjects and patients with Parkinson's disease are analyzed with the objective of reaching a quantitatively evaluation of the associated symptom. It has been observed that the waveform of a patient with Parkinson's disease becomes more irregular as the symptom is getting more serious, while the waveform of a healthy subject is rather regular. In this study, the regularity of the waveform is evaluated by the so-called t rajectory parallel measure. The results show a large difference in the traj ectory par allel measure of the waveforms of healthy subjects vs. those of the Parkinson's disease patients. Furthermore, the trajectory parallel meas ure of Parkinson's disease patients can be quantitatively ranked to correla te to the degree of the symptom. This paper begins with a brief description about Parkinson's disease. The trajectory par allel measure is then introd uced and applied to analysis of the waveforms of both healthy subjects and patients with Parkinson's disease. Illustrative results are shown to demons trate the applicability of the proposed analysis methodology.