Wearable Audio-feedback System for Gait Rehabilitation in Subjects with Parkinson's Disease

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a degenerative neurological disorder, associated with movement impairments. Recent studies have shown that auxiliary cueing in the form of video, audio, or haptic feedback can improve the gait performance in PD patients. We have developed a new platform to support gait rehabilitation in PD patients based on a wearable system able to produce real-time feedback to the user in a comfortable and effective way. Using a set of custom wearable inertial sensors, with advanced on-board processing capabilities, our application employs a smartphone to analyze in real time the patient's gait and to return an appropriate real time audio bio-feedback (ABF) message to the user to correct and improve gait performance. The main advantages of the system are mobility and unobtrusiveness: it can be comfortably worn and carried by the patient with no range restrictions, giving the possibility to monitor and rehabilitate the patient in real-life scenarios, both indoors and outdoors.