FOG-IT - An Integrated software platform for Tagging Freezing of Gait in Parkinson’s Disease

From 01-01-2021 to 31-12-2023

Description

 Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder, affecting around 2% of older people (>60 years). Alarmingly, PD is one of the fastest growing neurological disorders with a prevalence that doubles every 20-30 years. Due to ageing and environmental factors, 4.3 million people will be living with PD by 2040 in the EU alone.1 The disease hallmark is an alpha-synucleinopathy-driven loss of mainly nigrostriatal dopaminergic neurons, causing a widespread brain circuitry dysfunction and a multitude of motor and non-motor symptoms.2 Freezing of Gait (FOG), whereby patients suddenly lose the ability to walk, is quite possibly the most debilitating symptom, as it is episodic and most of all unpredictable. Most patients will develop FOG in the course of the disease (70% after 5-10 years), a turning point called ‘FOG-conversion’. Once this milestone is reached, patients experience more anxiety, have a lower quality of life and are at a much higher risk of falls.3 Sixty-one percent of falls in PD are directly due to FOG often forcing institutionalization into nursing homes.4 Current treatments are unable to slow down PD and offer only partial relief for FOG. Despite prolific research efforts,5 the underlying biology of FOG is ill-understood, precluding therapeutic development. The most important limitation to advance novel treatments is the difficulty to measure FOG. Health professionals rely on unreliable clinical methods to rate FOG. Research and industry depend on motion capturing (MoCap) systems, which work well for normal motion but fail to pick up disrupted movement without costly visual annotation. With this project, we want to address this bottleneck by pioneering and testing a technology-driven FOG-measurement software platform. We propose a 4-phased release of this platform, evolving from (1) basic automatic, (2) multiple source, (3) personalized to (4) online assessment. With each upgrade, we will target the interest from the scientific and medical instruments communities, and will license our software to parties who have the capacity to perform the upscaling. 

Team

• Bart Vanrumste, Co-promoter
• Alice Nieuwboer, Coordinator (External)

Financing

Funding: KU Leuven - Internal Funding KU Leuven

Program/Grant Type: C3 - KU Leuven Category 3 Funding