Now AI can detect Parkinson's disease while you are sleeping
This new low-cost tool may change how Parkinson's disease affects people's lives.
By ET Online | Updated:
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The AI model can make early diagnosis possible, helping Parkinson's patients take necessary steps before it's too late.
Parkinson's disease, a central nervous system disorder that affects movement, sometimes causing tremors, doesn't come with a warning. It is the world's second-most common neurological disorder, after Alzheimer's disease.
Caused by the low dopamine levels in the brain, the disease doesn't show signs until it is too late. Even worse, the deterioration is neither reversible nor preventable.
But, the future of early Parkinson's diagnosis may be a possibility with the help of robots, thanks to a team of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers. The research paper has been published in the scientific journal Nature Medicine.
The artificial intelligence (AI) model - developed by Dina Katabi, the Thuan (1990) and Nicole Pham Professor at MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and principal investigator at MIT Jameel Clinic, and her team - can detect Parkinson’s just from reading an individual's breathing patterns.
With the help of a Wi-Fi router or a breathing belt, the AI uses a neural network (a set of connected algorithms that can mimic how the brain works) to identify the presence and severity of the neurological disease from the subject's breathing patterns when s/he is sleeping. The system extracts nocturnal breathing signals either from a breathing belt worn by the subject, or from radio signals that bounce off their body while asleep. It processes the breathing signals using a neural network to infer whether the person has PD, and if they do, assesses the severity of their PD in accordance with the MDS-UPDRS. (Image: Nature Medicine (Nat Med) ISSN 1546-170X) The neural network has been trained by MIT PhD student Yuzhe Yang (first author) and postdoc Yuan Yuan that can determine whether or not someone has Parkinson's.
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This AI tool can be used every night at home while sleeping and without touching their body to determine if an individual has the disease.
The breathing belt has to be worn by the person around his/her chest or abdomen which can record the data of the breathing signals. Whereas, the Wi-Fi router (with no Internet access) emits radio signals, analyses reflections off the surroundings, and extracts the subject’s breathing patterns. "The breathing signal is then fed to the neural network to assess Parkinson’s passively, and there is zero effort needed from the patient and caregiver," the paper read.
World Parkinson's Day: Coffee, Nuts & Fish Can Boost Brain Power
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Parkinson's Disease, a neurodegenerative disorder, is affecting the ageing population's mobility and locomotion.
The disabling disease occurs in elderly (between age 50 and 65) when the brain cells get damaged. The brain's natural chemical 'dopamine' is in charge of the nerve cell communication. The disease develops when the brain is unable to produce dopamine, and starts abnormally storing a protien called 'Lewy bodies' in substantia nigra, a part which controls movement.
The symptoms of the disease - rest tremors, bradykinesia or slow movements, and muscle stiffness or rigidity - develop gradually over the years. In most cases the cause of the condition is not known.
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The AI model learns the auxiliary task of predicting an individual's brain activity (quantitative electroencephalogram or qEEG) from his/her nocturnal breathing. This further helps the model from overfitting and interpreting the output.
Dr James Parkinson, who first described the disease as a neurological syndrome in 1817, had shared the relationship between Parkinson’s and breathing. His body of work inspired the researchers to make use of this connection to create the AI tool. “Some medical studies have shown that respiratory symptoms manifest years before motor symptoms, meaning that breathing attributes could be promising for risk assessment before Parkinson’s diagnosis,” Katabi said.
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This new low-cost tool may change how Parkinson's disease affects people's lives. It can make early diagnosis possible, helping the patient take necessary steps before it's too late.
Currently, common motor symptoms such as tremors, stiffness and slowness don't appear in patients several years after the onset of the disease.
