Multimodal data acquisition set for objective assessment of Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's disease is a relatively common illness, constantly progressing, evoking anxiety and depression resulting from significantly restricted independence. Its dominating symptoms include muscle rigidity, rest tremor, slowness and postural disorders. They can lead to progressing gait disorders, hypomimia, extrapyramidal dysarthria and micrography. Acquisition of data imaging the condition of a patient and their objective evaluation can constitute a valuable tool improving the diagnostics and treatment monitoring. The developed data acquisition set enables recording data while the patient is performing selected tests, based on the UDPRS scale. The set consists of an infrared camera, a camera operating within the visible range, a microphone with a preamplifier, a graphic tablet and a laptop. A set of recording devices controlled by a graphic user interface guarantees the acquisition of data for the purposes of studying primarily motor symptoms. The set of recorded data includes a face image in the visible light range and in infrared for studying hypomimia, video images of the limbs for studying finger tapping movement regularity, hand movement regularity, lower limb agility and gait, and spontaneous and forced speech samples to evaluate the strength of the voice, its timbre and quality. In addition, the used graphic tablet enables collecting handwriting samples for testing writing speed and the force used. The suggested solution enables non-invasive quantitative measurements and archiving multimodal data describing the condition of a patient, which after processing can be used in diagnostics, evaluating treatment effectiveness and studying the progression of the disease.