Preliminary Network Centric Therapy for Machine Learning Classification of Deep Brain Stimulation Status for the Treatment of Parkinson’s Disease with a Conformal Wearable and Wireless Inertial Sensor

The concept of Network Centric Therapy represents an amalgamation of wearable and wireless inertial sensor systems and machine learning with access to a Cloud computing environment. The advent of Network Centric Therapy is highly relevant to the treatment of Parkinson’s disease through deep brain stimulation. Originally wearable and wireless systems for quantifying Parkinson’s disease involved the use a smartphone to quantify hand tremor. Although originally novel, the smartphone has notable issues as a wearable application for quantifying movement disorder tremor. The smartphone has evolved in a pathway that has made the smartphone progressively more cumbersome to mount about the dorsum of the hand. Furthermore, the smartphone utilizes an inertial sensor package that is not certified for medical analysis, and the trial data access a provisional Cloud computing environment through an email account. These concerns are resolved with the recent development of a conformal wearable and wireless inertial sensor system. This conformal wearable and wireless system mounts to the hand with the profile of a bandage by adhesive and accesses a secure Cloud computing environment through a segmented wireless connectivity strategy involving a smartphone and tablet. Additionally, the conformal wearable and wireless system is certified by the FDA of the United States of America for ascertaining medical grade inertial sensor data. These characteristics make the conformal wearable and wireless system uniquely suited for the quantification of Parkinson’s disease treatment through deep brain stimulation. Preliminary evaluation of the conformal wearable and wireless system is demonstrated through the differentiation of deep brain stimulation set to “On” and “Off” status. Based on the robustness of the acceleration signal, this signal was selected to quantify hand tremor for the prescribed deep brain stimulation settings. Machine learning classification using the Waikato Environment for Knowledge Analysis (WEKA) was applied using the multilayer perceptron neural network. The multilayer perceptron neural network achieved considerable classification accuracy for distinguishing between the deep brain stimulation system set to “On” and “Off” status through the quantified acceleration signal data obtained by this recently developed conformal wearable and wireless system. The research achievement establishes a progressive pathway to the future objective of achieving deep brain stimulation capabilities that promote closed-loop acquisition of configuration parameters that are uniquely optimized to the individual through extrinsic means of a highly conformal wearable and wireless inertial sensor system and machine learning with access to Cloud computing resources.