Development of a low-cost, compact, wireless, 16 - channel biopotential data acquisition, signal conditioning and arbitrary waveform stimulator.

The health and fitness of the human body rely heavily on physiological parameters. These parameters can be measured using various tools such as ECG, EMG, EEG, EOG, among others, to obtain real-time physiological data. Analysing the bio-signals obtained from these measurements can provide valuable information that can be used to improve health-care in terms of observation, diagnosis, and treatment. In bio-signal pattern recognition applications, more channels provide multiple information simultaneously. Different biosignal acquisition devices are available in the market, most of which are designed for specific signals like ECG, EMG, EEG etc The gain of the amplifiers and frequency of the filters are designed as per the targeted signals; due to which one device cannot be used for other signals. Also, most of the systems are wired system which is not comfortable for animal studies. In this paper, a low-cost, compact, wireless, 16 channel biopotential data acquisition system with integrated electrical stimulator is designed and implemented. There are several novel and flexible design approaches were incorporated in the proposed design like (1) It has user selectable digital filter in each channel based on the signal frequencies like ECG, EMG, EEG, EOG. The same system will be used to acquire different signals simultaneously. (2) It has variable gain with a configurable analog bandpass filter. (3) It can acquire signals from 4 patients simultaneously. (4) The system is capable to acquire signal from both two-electrode as well as three-electrode configurations. (5) It has integrated stimulator with trapezoidal, charge-balanced, biphasic stimulus output with near zero DC level and user selectable pulse duration or frequency of the stimulus. The developed system has the ability to acquire and transmit data wirelessly in real-time at a high transfer rate. To validate the performance of the system, tests were conducted on the acquired signals using a simulator.

Techniques for the detection and management of freezing of gait in Parkinson's disease - A systematic review and future perspectives.

Freezing of Gait (FoG) is one of the most critical debilitating motor symptoms of advanced Parkinson's disease (PD) with a higher rate of occurrence in aged people. PD affects the cardinal motor functioning and leads to non-motor symptoms, including cognitive and neurobehavioral abnormalities, autonomic dysfunctions and sleep disorders. Since its pathogenesis is complex and unclear yet, this paper targets the studies done on the pathophysiology and epidemiology of FoG in PD. Gait disorder and cardinal features vary from festination (involuntary hurrying in walking) to freezing of gait (breakdown of repetitive movement of steps despite the intention to walk) in patients. Hence, it is difficult to assess the FoG in clinical trials. Therefore, the current research emphasizes wearable sensor-based systems over pharmacology and surgical methods.•This paper presents a technological review of various techniques used for the assessment of FoG with a comprehensive comparison.•Researchers are aiming at the development of wireless sensor-based assistive devices to (a) predict the FoG episode in a different environment, (b) acquire the long-term data for real-time analysis, and (c) cue the FoG patients.•We summarize the work done till now and future research directions needed for a suitable cueing mechanism to overcome FoG.