Diagnosing Parkinson’s disease is difficult. Often, early symptoms of the progressive neurological condition may be overlooked, or mistaken for signs of aging. Early diagnosis can help save lives and improve treatment outcomes immeasurably. A team at UCLA Samueli School of Engineering has developed an inexpensive way to test for Parkinson’s. If it is cheaper than existing testing and turns out to be accurate, the test could perhaps be adopted widely, helping people get the treatment they need before the inexorable march of Parkinson’s has gone too far.
The test utilizes a 3D printed pen that essentially evaluates your handwriting. A team led by Associate Professor of Bioengineering Jun Chen developed the pen and published a paper about it in Nature Chemical Engineering. The ingenious pen uses a ferrofluid (combination of an oil and iron shavings) to track motions when writing, and also when moving from word to word. Rather than send away for tests, have to take blood samples, or worry about the cost of the test, the pen is meant to be a convenient, quick, and inexpensive way to test a person right in the doctor’s office.
By tracking the motion of the ferrofluid and a magnetic coil in the pen, complete motions of the hand are able to be tracked in a very accurate way. A pilot study with 16 participants, where three had Parkinson’s, has shown that so far, the test is 96.22% accurate. Later, an AI model was used to compare their motions to known motions of people with Parkinson’s. The idea is that preliminary tremors or other typical movements will be present from a very early stage of the disease.
Chen said that,
“Detection of subtle motor symptoms unnoticeable to the naked eye is critical for early intervention in Parkinson’s disease, Our diagnostic pen presents an affordable, reliable and accessible tool that is sensitive enough to pick up subtle movements and can be used across large populations and in resource-limited areas.”
The pen doesn’t actually write, but using it in this instance is as easy as writing, with mock drawings or writing being enough. People could take around five minutes to do the test. In the tests, the patients drew spirals, circles, and letters on paper and in the air.
