Online tremor measurement tool
 

As a small step towards making it easier to quantify our reports, I've written a program that attempts to measure tremor. It is available online at:

http://www.parkinsonsmeasurement.web...Box/tremor.htm

There is nothing to install; it should run directly from the web page.

The program requires that you have a pointing device that picks up your tremor. If this does not happen, the results are meaningless.

I've been using a laptop's touchpad. Sometimes I get good results, sometimes bad. This is where I need your help. Can you find a way to increase sensitivity while, at the same time, not affecting the tremor's behaviour? For instance, I've tried putting washers and springs between the pad and the finger.

I realize that tremor is a complicated issue, not least that it varies with time, and that this program only gives a snapshot value. But I believe that some measurement is better than none. I also hope this effort will spur on other people to do better. It would be great if sometime soon all PwP had free tools to measure their symptoms.

John

I've improved the tremor report generated by the program:

http://www.parkinsonsmeasurement.org/toolBox/tremor.htm

Note the new url.

To use the program you put your finger on a laptop's touchpad. If the touchpad is not sensitive enough to detect the tremor or, conversely, the tremor is so large that the cursor is continually being taken off the screen or, indeed, the part of the body with the tremor cannot be moved on the touchpad, for instance a foot, an alternative way can be used.

The Audacity program can be downloaded for free. The people who have written Audacity have done an excellent job.

Amongst other things, it allows you to make sound tracks and visualize them with precise timing. To find the frequency of a tremor all you need to do is to let the tremor repeatedly tap a table, for instance. The noise this generates is picked up by the computer's microphone and "drawn" on the screen. The taps are usually clearly visible over the background noise. All that needs doing then is to count the taps over a short period. Normalizing this to one second will give the frequency in hertz. Audacity is also able to run a spectral analysis which is useful if there are superimposed tremors.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to see how Audacity can be used to measure the magnitude of tremors.

I'll be interested in hearing your experience of these measurement tools.

My view is that once you can measure something, you are on the way to being able to control it.

John