Online tremor suppression using electromyography and low-level electrical stimulation
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Tremor is one of the most prevalent movement disorders. There is a large proportion of patients (around 25%) in whom current treatments do not attain a significant tremor reduction. This paper proposes a tremor suppression strategy that detects tremor from the electromyographic signals of the muscles from which tremor originates and counteracts it by delivering electrical stimulation to the antagonist muscles in an out of phase manner. The detection was based on the iterative Hilbert transform and stimulation was delivered above the motor threshold (motor stimulation) and below the motor threshold (sensory stimulation). The system was tested on six patients with predominant wrist flexion/extension tremor (four with Parkinson disease and two with Essential tremor) and led to an average tremor reduction in the range of 46%-81% and 35%-48% across five patients when using the motor and sensory stimulation, respectively. In one patient, the system did not attenuate tremor. These results demonstrate that tremor attenuation might be achieved by delivering electrical stimulation below the motor threshold, preventing muscle fatigue and discomfort for the patients, which sets the basis for the development of an alternative treatment for tremor.
Date Issued
2015-05-01
Date Acceptance
2014-05-14
Citation
IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, 2015, 23 (3), pp.385-395
ISSN
1534-4320
Publisher
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Start Page
385
End Page
395
Journal / Book Title
IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering
Volume
23
Issue
3
Copyright Statement
© 2014 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.
Identifier
http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000354467200006&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=1ba7043ffcc86c417c072aa74d649202
Subjects
Science & Technology
Technology
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Engineering, Biomedical
Rehabilitation
Engineering
Afferent stimulation
electrical stimulation
neuromodulation
tremor demodulation
tremor suppression
DEEP BRAIN-STIMULATION
MOTOR UNIT RECRUITMENT
PATHOLOGICAL TREMOR
PARKINSONS-DISEASE
SURFACE ELECTROMYOGRAPHY
MOVEMENT-DISORDERS
ATTENUATION
NERVE
NEUROPROSTHESIS
ACCELEROMETER
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2014-07-15