Tremor Suppression Using Functional Electrical Stimulation

Parkinson’s disease (PD) and essential tremor are two major causes of pathological tremor among people over 60 years old. Due to the side effects and complications of traditional tremor management methods such as medication and deep brain surgery, non invasive tremor suppression methods have become more popular in recent years. Functional electrical stimulation (FES) is one of the methods used to reduce tremor in several studies. However, the effect of different FES parameters on tremor suppression and discomfort level, including amplitude, the number of pulses in each stimulation burst, frequency, and pulse width is yet to be studied for longer stimulation durations. Therefore, in this work, experiments were performed on 14 participants with PD to evaluate the effect of thirty seconds of out-of-phase electrical stimulation on wrist tremor at rest. Trials were conducted by varying the stimulation amplitude and the number of pulses while keeping the frequency and pulse width constant. Each test was repeated three times for each participant. The results showed an overall tremor suppression for 11 out of 14 participants and no average positive effects for three participants. It is concluded that despite the effectiveness of FES in tremor suppression, each set of FES parameters showed different suppression levels among participants due to the variability of tremor over time. Thus, for this method to be effective, an adaptive control system would be required to tune FES parameters in real time according to changes in tremor during extended stimulation periods.