Development of a Wearable Tremor Suppression Glove

Abstract

Current treatments for parkinsonian tremor, such as medication and brain surgery, have shown varying levels of effectiveness and carry the risk of significant side effects and complications. Studies on wearable tremor suppression devices have shown positive results in the use of mechanical and electrical suppression on tremor management of the upper limbs. Wearable technology for tremor suppression is a promising solution for patients who do not respond to medication and do not present severe enough symptoms to undergo surgery. Available tremor suppression devices are mainly for elbow and wrist tremor. Devices for finger tremor suppression have not been developed despite the fact that finger tremor is also present. In this study, a wearable tremor suppression glove prototype was designed and validated with recorded tremor data from patients with Parkinson's disease. Two validation experiments were conducted to assess the performance of the proposed device when suppressing tremor motion and following voluntary motion. The tremor suppression assessment showed an overall tremor amplitude reduction of $\pmb{85.0\% \pm 8.1\%}$ , and the power reductions for the Ist, 2nd, and 3rd harmonics are $\pmb{87.9\%\pm .6\%, 92.0\%\pm .4\%}$ , and $\pmb{81.7\% \pm 13.0\%}$ , respectively. Following voluntary motion was possible with a RMSE of $\pmb{14.2\%\pm .5\%}$ and a correlation coefficient of $\pmb{0.97\pm 0.01}$ . Both assessments have shown positive results for the validation of the proposed device; however, further work is needed to improve the performance of the proposed device prior to human trials.