Cloud Hosting

There is no known cure for Parkinsons disease, but studies show that consistent, clinician-guided physical therapy can improve a patients range of outcomes and quality of life.

But what happens to a patient whose insurance coverage for physical therapy has run out? Or to rural patients without access to facilities? Or to those struggling to stand or walk at home, with no clinician to guide them?

A UNC-Chapel Hill computer science research team is addressing those issues with a cutting-edge solution: augmented reality.

Since September 2022, Henry Fuchs, Danielle Szafir and others have collaborated with medical researchers at Carolina on the multifaceted Parkinsons Project. Their PD-Insighter software combines graphics and data visualization to allow clinicians treating Parkinsons disease to watch and analyze patient movement in real-world home scenarios.

AR headsets and motion sensors track patient movements and interactions with their surroundings to provide the data.

We could only capture this data with technology that youre wearing every day, said Fuchs, the Federico Gil Distinguished Professor of Computer Science. So what is it that youll wear every day 10 years from now? We think itll be your glasses, which will have some cameras that could look out, look down and look in, so that they could capture your facial expression and capture your body and so on.

The metaverse is the next big leap in tech, says Fuchs, who believes AR glasses will eventually replace phones the same way phones replaced laptops.

AR glasses differ from virtual reality headsets, like the ones used in gaming, because the wearer can still see the world around them, augmented with graphics. AR headsets let Parkinsons patients live their daily lives with minimal disruption, while also collecting data for clinicians to study.

However, its not enough just to collect data points.

What do you do when you have all that data? said Szafir, an assistant professor of computer science. How do you make it intuitive? How do you help people leverage their own expertise so that you dont have to be professional data scientists to make sense of all this information thats flowing in?

Doctoral research assistant Jade Kandel played a lead role fleshing out the PD-Insighter software and its desktop-based overview dashboard, which labels the patients actions throughout the day and highlights freezes or motor deficits that clinicians can sort through in minutes instead of hours.

The team also worked on an immersive replay component, which allows clinicians through their own AR headsets to replay a patients activities. The replay allows clinicians to view a 3D body skeleton of their patients and even see digital recreations of the patients environment, such as furniture the patient may use for support.

The more the Parkinsons Project team develops these tools and collaborates with medical researchers, the more they see the potential to serve not just Parkinsons patients but provide support for a wide variety of medical ailments, like stroke patients or people rehabilitating from surgery.

I love thinking about that. Yes, this is great for Parkinsons but it can also be applied to so many different conditions for rehabilitation, Kandel said.

These are the principal investigators of the Parkinsons Project:

Read more:

Computer science team uses AR to treat Parkinson's | UNC-Chapel Hill - The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill