Quantitative physiological assessments of movement disorders have been limited to the laboratory and have not become an accepted part of patient evaluation despite proven diagnostic value particularly for dyskinesia and tremor in psychiatric and Parkinson's Disease patients. These assessments have been expensive, cumbersome and not always reliable or validated. The proposed miniaturized ambulatory spectral analyzer of movements (SAM-II) solves these problems permitting easily obtained spectral analyses of movement of various body parts. The ultra-small, self- contained unit performs FFT analyses and then detects and records significant movement events. It can be used for tests during a doctor's office visit or worn to collect naturalistic data for up to 5 consecutive days of usual activities. A computer output displays occurrence times and magnitude for significant events both as an information rich 3-D graphical display and as numbers characterizing frequency, power and duration of events. This enabling technology could set a measurement standard for movement disorders. The naturalistic long-duration recording and precision of quantification provided by the SAM-II enhances treatment assessment and early detection of dyskinesia. This early detection is often missed despite its treatment importance particularly given new medication choices.
The SAM-II unit if established as a standard would be sold to virtually all neurologists and psychiatrists working with movement disorders. Millions of Americans who suffer from TD, Parkinson's, Essential Tremor and other abnormal movement disorders would be followed using this device for evaluation and treatment. This represents a fairly large market closely related to the medical market for activity monitoring in which IM Systems already has marketing experience.
