NCT05308368

Analysis and Suppression of Tremor During Grasp Using Ultrasound Imaging and Electrical Stimulation

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 12 (actual)
• Sponsor: North Carolina State University · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 90 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

Individuals experiencing tremors face difficulty performing activities of daily living caused by involuntary oscillation of the muscles in the hands and arms. Current solutions to help suppress tremors include medication, surgery, assistive devices and lifestyle change. However, each of these has a drawback of its own including cost and unwanted side effects. Aside from the solutions listed, it has been shown that functional electrical stimulation (FES) is a possible solution to help suppress tremor. Additionally, FES can be combined with different technologies including accelerometers, gyroscopes and motion capture to develop a closed loop system for tremor suppression. However, this has drawbacks including signal interference and the need for multiple sensor to fully classify the tremor. Ultrasound imaging solves some of these issues because it can provide a direct visualization of hand muscles that contribute to tremor. This study will focus on detecting characterizing and differentiating tremors from voluntary hand motion using ultrasound imaging. The results obtained from this study will help design FES-based tremor-suppression techniques in the future. This study will target both subjects with different tremor disorders and able bodied subjects.

Conditions

• Parkinson Disease
• Essential Tremor

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
DEVICE	Ultrasound Imaging	We will collect ultrasound images during the grasping motion for both groups
DEVICE	Electromyography	We will collect electromyography (EMG) signals of both the flexor and extensor muscles of the wrist during the grasping motion for both groups
DEVICE	Inertial Measurement Units (IMU)	We will use data from the ultrasound images and EMG to develop a tremor model. The model will be validated in comparison to joint angle measurements from an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) collected during the grasping motion
DEVICE	Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES)	We will use the develop closed-loop control methods for tremor suppression using information from the ultrasound-image based tremor models. FES will be used to provide stimulation that will help with tremor suppression

Timeline

• Start date: 2021-04-11
• Primary completion: 2025-07-31
• Completion: 2025-07-31
• First posted: 2022-04-04
• Last updated: 2025-10-27
• Results posted: 2025-10-27

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States