fairfolio
Saved Projects

TremorSense: A Novel Parkinsonian Tremor Monitoring and Suppression System

ISEF · 2024 Biomedical Engineering

Mendu, Haasini · William Mason High School

Overview

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder. Tremors, which affect over 70% of PD patients, significantly disrupt daily activities of living. Currently, tremors are managed through medications but dosing is based on subjective clinical assessments, which fail to capture PD’s fluctuating course. There is a need for a wearable and quantitative tremor monitoring system to aid medication dosing. I hypothesized that I could develop an inexpensive and lightweight closed-loop tremor monitoring and suppression system using an accelerometer and vibration motors, which stimulate pressure-sensitive skin receptors distracting the brain from the dysregulated tremor feedback loop. To measure tremor frequency and intensity, I used an Arduino Nano 33 BLE. Tremors were detected using a frequency threshold. The frequency threshold was identified using an age-and sex-matched accelerometery dataset of patients from the Michael J Fox Foundation. Following tremor detection, coin cell vibrators are simulated to reduce tremors. A wearable tremor monitoring bracelet was designed to incorporate 7 parallel-connected vibrators powered by a 3 V battery. For device testing, tremors were simulated using a TENS unit. Lastly, I built an app using Android App Studio to display collected data to patients and clinicians. The Arduino sensor data is transmitted via Bluetooth and stored in Firebase. The TremorSense device met the engineering and design criteria: by weighing under 40g, costing under $40, and successfully differentiating between tremor and non-tremor movements with an accuracy of 92.31%. This tool enables physicians to better monitor and treat PD patients, improving their quality of life.

Competition history

  • ISEF 2024 Biomedical Engineering · Entry ENBM021 · Los Angeles, California, United States Affiliated fair in OH, United States of America

Resources

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

Source: Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair

Save projects to your library

Sign in with Google to keep track of projects you find interesting, organized into folders. An account also raises your daily allowance for “Has this been done?”, and lets you create a key for the MCP server with a much higher limit than anonymous use. Browsing stays public.

Continue with Google