Objective: The objective of the research was to develop a biofeedback training method for the patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD), utilizing videomotion analysis for the measurement of the patient’s body movements.

Background: Patients with PD suffer from impaired balance and decreased postural responses, which lead to falls in advanced stages of the disease. There are known methods of biofeedback training to address these problems. In these methods stabilometric platforms or accelerometers are utilized to measure the patient’s movements. All these methods require special equipment. Development of the biofeedback method based on videomotion analysis will be beneficial for home users and some clinics, because it would require only PC with camera.

Methods: Colored labels are placed on the both shoulders and on the midline at the waist level. Patient is positioned in front of the USB-camera, data received from the camera are processed in the PC, and visual biofeedback is presented on the screen. The position of the patient’s trunk and moving target are represented on the screen by labels of different colors. Patient is instructed to follow the target by changing his (her) posture.

Results: We developed a custom software for the real-time measurement of movements, which is able to track colored labels attached to the patient and provide visual biofeedback to the patient. Target is moving periodically (horizontal and vertical position is changed according to sinusoidal law), with the frequency of vertical oscillations (which represent anteroposterior movements) being 2 times greater than of horizontal ones. We provide an example of practical utilization of the method. The patient with PD attended training in the “on”-period of optimal treatment scheme and followed the target by changing her body position. The typical training session lasts 5 minutes. While the first session Spearman correlation of sagittal body deviation and target movements was 0.229, and while the last session it was 0.434.

Conclusions: The developed biofeedback training method may be useful for improvement of posture maintaining in the patients with PD, and may be used in clinic setting as well as at home.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/the-method-of-biofeedback-training-for-the-patients-with-parkinsons-disease/