Exploring the use of technology to help in detection of non-motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease

• Main Author: Ayushi Singhal
• Other Authors: Miao Chun Yan
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/52780
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This report has been written with the aim of proving the reader with a vivid summary of the author’s work and learning experience during completion of the Final Year Project at School of Computer Engineering at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. For the purpose of this project, a Farm Game environment built as part of an ongoing PhD project was used as the gaming arena where mini games were developed to detect cognitive impairment. The project draws inspiration from the widespread of Parkinson’s disease and the inability of any medical test to detect it with 100% accuracy. There has been a lack of focus on the non motor symptoms and how it is related to the onset of Parkinson’s disease in individuals. Hence, the goal of this project is to develop gaming technology which will help detect deficits in working memory of the users and predict the presence of Parkinson’s disease. The project implementation is based on Unity 3D, and open- source 3D game development tool and the iOS. The game will deployed on the iPad to further enhance the user experience. For ease of use, features like Speech Recognition have also been incorporated. Three different mini games have been developed to challenge the user and test their cognitive abilities. The games target different areas of the brain and help in creating an over all image of the healthiness of the brain, focusing on the memory component. The entire project has been developed for the iPad using Unity 3D and C# as the scripting language.