Measurement environment for diagnosing the Parkinson´s disease

Movement disorders indicate several diseases before other diagnostic methods could reveal them. This is true also in the case of Parkinson´s disease, PD. A measurement technique (the movement patterns to be analysed, the necessary measurement set-up and evaluation algorithms) is described that ran be used to diagnose PD. Both simple (e.g. turn over) and complex (e.g. band waving during gait) movement patterns of young (20…25 year old), healthy males were recorded with the help of the PRIMAS precision motion analyser. The definition of the measurement set-up means the arrangement of the cameras as well as the placement of the markers to anatomical landmark points. The evaluation algorithms were written in MATLAB thus providing a flexible tool for finding a common language between medical doctors and engineers. For example, the rigidity of muscles influences the frequency spectrum of a movement, that can be computed from the position-time functions of markers