SEETHI SAHIB MEMORIAL

POLYTECHNIC COLLEGE TIRUR

Department of Electronics engineering

DISEASE DETECTION
USING BIO-ROBOTICS
SEMINAR REPORT

Guided by Submitted by
VV SHAJIL AMEER MOHAMMED IRSHAD E
[ Electronics Dept.] Reg No. 17040535

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SEETHI SAHIB MEMORIAL POLYTECHNIC

COLLEGE TIRUR

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRONICS
ENGINEERING

CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the seminar entitled “DISEASE DETECTION

USING BIO-ROBOTICS” is submitted by MOHAMMED IRSHAD E
bearing Reg No. 17040554 in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the
award of the diploma in Electronics Engineering of S.S.M
POLYTECHNIC COLLEGE, TIRUR during the academic year 2019-
2020.

Staff in charge : Head of department:

Date :
Internal Examiner: External Examiner:

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Acknowledgement

First of all, I am indebted to the GOD ALMIGHTY for giving me an

opportunity to excel in my efforts to complete this seminar on time.
I am extremely grateful to Mr. Abdulnasar Kaippanchery, Principal, SSM
POLYTECHNIC COLLEGE TIRUR and Mr .P H Subair, Head of the
Department, Department of Electronics, for providing all the required
sources for the successful completion of my seminar.
Also I express my sincere thanks to Mr. V V Shajil Ameer, Mr. P I Basheer
sir (Staff in charge) in for providing valuable suggestions and guidance for
the successful seminar presentation
And finally my benefit gratitude is to my “Parents and friends”, and all other
teachers who gave me moral support and encouragement to accomplish task.

MOHAMMED IRSHAD E

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ABSTRACT

This seminar deals with the design and the development of a bio-
robotic system based on fuzzy logic to diagnose and monitor the neuro-
psychophysical conditions of an individual. The system, called DDX, is
portable without losing efficiency and accuracy in diagnosis and also
provides the ability to transfer diagnosis through a remote communication
interface, in order to monitor the daily health of a patient. DDX is a portable
system, involving multiple parameters such as reaction time, speed, strength
and tremor which are processed by means of fuzzy logic. The resulting output
can be visualized through a display or transmitted by a communication
interface.

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INDEX

1. INTRODUCTION :6

2. BACKGROUND :8

3. INITIAL EXPERIMENTAL SYSTEMS : 10

4. THE NEW EXPERIMENTAL SYSTEM : 13

5. DESIGN AND MECHANICS : 16

6. ELECTRONICS : 17

7. SOFTWARE : 18

8. PROTOCOLS OF TEST : 20

9. CONCLUSIONS : 24

10. REFERENCE : 25

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1. INTRODUCTION

In order to measure quantitatively the neuro-psychomotor conditions

of an individual with a view to subsequently detecting his/her state of
health, it is necessary to obtain a set of parameters such as reaction time,
speed, strength and tremor. By processing these parameters through the use
of fuzzy logic it is possible to monitor an individual's state of health, .i.e.
whether he/she is healthy or affected by a particular pathology such as
Parkinson's disease, dementia, etc.

The set of parameters obtained is useful not only to diagnose

neuromotor pathologies (e.g. Parkinson Disease), but also to assess general
everyday health or to monitor sports performance; moreover, continuous
use of the device by an individual for health-monitoring purposes, not only
allows for detection of the onset of a particular pathology but also provides
greater awareness in terms of how life style or certain habits tend to have
repercussions on psycho-physical well-being. Since an individual's state of
health should be continually monitored, it is essential that he or she can
manage the test autonomously without his/her emotional state being
influenced: autonomous testing is important, as the individual is likely to
be more relaxed thus obviating emotional problems. The new system has
been designed with reference to the biomechanical characteristics of the
human finger.

Disease detector (DDX) is a new bio robotic device that is a fuzzy

based control system for the detection of neuro-motional and
psychophysical health conditions. The initial experimental system (DD1)
and the current system (DD2) are not easily portable and, even if they are

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very reliable, cannot estimate the patient health beyond the typical
parameters of Parkinson’s disease nor are they able to remotely transmit
such diagnoses.

This new bio-robotic system is exploited in order to obtain an

intelligent and reliable detector supported by a very small and portable
device, with a simple joystick with few buttons, a liquid-display (LCD),
and a simple interface for remote communication of diagnosis. It may be
adopted for earth and space applications, because of its portability, in order
to measure all the reactions in front of external effects.

The DDX control system consists of a small board with an internal

fuzzy microcontroller that acquires, through the action on a button on the
joystick, some important parameters: reaction time, motion speed, force of
the finger on the button, and tremor and analyses them by fuzzy rules in
order to detect the patient’s disease class. Moreover this new device also
includes a system to detect vocal reaction. The resulting output can be
visualized through a display or transmitted by a communication interface.

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2. BACKGROUND

Reaction time, speed, force, and tremor are parameters that are used to
obtain a quantitative instrumental determination of a patient’s
neuropsychophysical health. These parameters have been used in the study
of the progression of Parkinson’s disease, a particularly degenerative neural
process, but these parameters can also be useful in detecting the wellness of
a healthy person. As a matter of fact, these measurements turn out to be an
excellent method of finding reactive parameters alteration due not only to a
pathology, but also, for example, to the use of drugs, alcohol, drugs used in
the treatment of mental conditions, or other substances that could affect a
person’s reactive and coordination capabilities.

Whether the person suffers from Parkinson’s disease; another

pathology, or is healthy, it is important to carry out continuous monitoring
of his health condition. The ordinary therapy for Parkinson’s disease has to
be carefully dosed with considerable frequency, because inadequate doses
could have repercussions of the motion capability of the patient. Therefore,
it is important to control the value of the parameters that determine nervous
system health.

Moreover, for a healthy person, a continuous health monitoring turn

out to be an excellent prevention system of some pathology and is an
excellent method to acquire consciousness of how lifestyle and behavior
have repercussions on one’s psychophysical well-being.

Since it is necessary to continually monitor one’s health, it is desirable

to do this testing and independently in whatever setting is practical. Allowing

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the patient to do the test him/herself allows the patient to feel comfortable,
eliminating measurement alteration due to emotional conditions. Actually, a
high degree of subordination to emotional conditions is a recurring
characteristic of the effects on the reactive ability of the patient. Just as the
simple act of having one’s blood pressure taken can induce an emotional state
that can have an influence on the results, a neuro- psychophysical health
evaluation can elicit an emotional state that can influence the results of the
test.

This influence can be reduced, if not entirely eliminated, by placing

the test completely under the patient’s own management without almost any
support from a doctor. Also making the test a daily exercise tends to make
the test more significant from an emotional standpoint and, in that way,
allows for more reliable results.

The system implementation details and advantages with respect to

previous techniques are presented here. The system is the result of research
on the biomechanics of the finger of the human hand through the realization
of a bio robotic system. The bio robotic system has also been designed with
reference to main analysis on brain behavior in neurobiological science.

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3. INITIAL EXPERIMENTAL SYSTEMS

(DD1&DD2)

DD1
Through DD1, which is a bio robotic system for the acquisition and the
restitution of the patient’s finger
movement data, it is possible to
point out some characteristic
about the extension of the index
finger of one hand towards the
target to find and estimate the
kinematic characteristics, the
control of the movement, and the impressed force.

The robotic system is composed of :

• A skeleton mounted on a support structure to acquire the finger
position of the patient who puts his hand in a glove vertically.
• Variable rotational resisters, sited in correspondence to the phalanx,
that are able to retrieve finger movements.
• Surface active electrodes that send an electromyographic signal
through a double-channel probe.

Some strain gauges are mounted on the structure in order to measure the
force of the contact.

The skeleton is supported from a PC equipped with an ISA/EISA

data acquisition card and system management software developed in C
language using the lab windows library for the analysis, acquisition of the
data, and the construction of the graphical interface.

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DD2

The target achieved with the

system DD2 are:

• A user friendly interface •

Easy and complete control
• Reduced test times.

This system is contained in a compact suitcase with all the elements

inside it. It has an acceptable design in order to improve function and
performance. Hand support has been redesigned as an independent part, so
that it is anatomically more adequate and easier to transport. The hand is
leaned horizontally for a more natural and comfortable ergonomic
condition.

The system of measuring the force exerted from the finger has been
replaced with one mono-axial load cell. The computer desktop has been
replaced with a portable computer laptop using a PCMCIA II acquisition
card. Also in this system, two electromyographic probes are applied on the
arms of the patient in order to measure the electrical discharge of the
flexural muscles and the tendons of the finger index.

All possibly dangerous equipment has been enclosed in a relatively

small multi-carbonate container; in this way, the voltage reduced from 220
ac to 5cc. A variety of colors were also considered in response to some
studies about patient reaction to some colors.

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The two models; DD1 and DD2, had been developed using the following
protocols:

• Fast Movement: Starting from a fixed point of initial reference, the

person must use the index finger to touch a target that measures the
impressed force (called “soft touch”) as quickly as possible. Other
parameters, such as the finger speed and reaction time, are measured
in parallel as the angular position.

• Not Controlled Movement: The person must do the same movement

of the “fast movement” protocol with watching his own finger, just
remembering the procedure learned with the previous movement,
thereby activating the working memory.

• Movement with Virtual control: The person looks at a virtual image

on a graphical display of his own finger and, when he touches the real
target, the virtual one changes color, indicating that it has been
touched, and this is the end of the test.

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4. THE NEW EXPERIMENTAL SYSTEM

(DDX)

DDX is the new experimental bio-robotic system for the acquisition

and restitution of human finger movement data. It is a bio-robotic system
designed and constructed with medical and clinical data for the analysis of
Parkinson’s disease. It was originally used for the analysis of neural
disturbances with quantitative evaluation of both the response times and the
dynamic action of the subject.

The system is characterized by a small dimension design; user friendly

hardware and software means that even non- experts will be able to use this
device. Now, it is applied not only in clinical activities, but also by healthy
persons wishing to know, ”How am I this morning?” and by athletes in order
to check their own physical performance. This is a portable system, involving
multiple parameters such as reaction time, speed, strength and tremor which
are processed by means of fuzzy logic. The resulting output can be visualized
through a display or transmitted by a communication interface.

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BLOCK DIAGRAM OF DDX

Figure is a block diagram that describes, from the functional point of view,
the structure of the proposed system.

The block (1) is the press button. This is the input patient interface and its
function is to capture indirectly three basic information for diagnosis: the
response time, the speed and the pressure of the fingertip. Effectively, it
captures the start time of button pressure, the end time and the force
impressed by using a strain gauge. The analog force signal is first amplified
in block (2), filtered and then converted in a 8-bit digital form by block (4).
All these three information are collected from block (6) which is the heart
of the system and directs the information flow among peripherals. Blocks
(5,8) represents the medical operator interface to give commands and to

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read outputs. The block (6) manages all information and stores them in
block (11) if it is necessary. Tremor is also caught up by a very cheap
switch accelerometer called “Tremor Sensor”. The block (10) performs
fuzzy rules on acquired data and return diagnosis results that will be output
on display (5). The audio unit, composed by a simple buzzer, is used to
synchronize the patient actions in relation to the kind of test.

Blocks A and B are , respectively ,a movement sensor that measures

hand tremors and a vocal sensor; the two blocks interact with block 6 and
apply parameters calculated using fuzzy logic.

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5. DESIGN AND MECHANICS

The target was the realization of a user-friendly and portable machine like
a mobile phone, with diagnostic efficiency that has advantages over the
existing systems of detection. The ability to grasp a joystick with one hand
is the fundamental aspect of this system. This was also good for detecting
tremors, which are typical characteristics of subjects affected by Parkinson’s
disease. Patient’s health can be tested daily with this machine.

Figure 4

Although design is typically the last part of a project, in this case it

was developed in parallel to the electronic system. Figure 4 shows the
design choice. The tremor sensor was located inside the joystick in a corner
extremity in order to amplify any patient vibrating motion. The microphone
is located inside the joystick and used when the person decided to do the
test concerning voice articulation. Other parameters are acquired from the
button.

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6. ELECTRONICS

The circuit is composed of

• A digital LCD-12 characters in two columns
• Four keys to navigate the menu, like on a mobile phone menu
• An OK key to confirm
• A menu key in order to return the main menu
• A buzzer for the acoustic beep
• A load cell with its amplifier
• A microphone to acquire the voice

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7. SOFTWARE

By pressing the button, three beacons are sent, signifying,

respectively, beginning pressure, race end, and force. First, the processor
sends an impulse (like a warning) to the buzzer, and the timer starts. It begins
the sampling and, after a random interval, sends another impulse to the
buzzer (in order to obtain the starting signal). The value of the timer is stored
in to tj. When the patient has pressed the push button, a beginning pressure
beacon is sent, and the value of the timer is assigned to ti This time is what
we call the “Reaction Time”. At the end of the movement stroke, an end-
ofrace beacon is sent, and the value of the timer is assigned to tf. The speed
of patient motion can be calculated from these times. When the stroke ends,
the pressure is calculated using a simple circuit based on a strain gauge, a
filter, an amplifier and an analog to digital (A/D) converter. Tremor is
measured by a routine that reads data from the switching accelerometer on
an input/output (I/O) pin.

At this point, the fuzzy block processes the data by using a set of rules
and stores results in memory to retrieve them later. The same happens with
the voice test.

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The processor also manages both the beacons to send to the display unit and
the communication protocol with a remote transmission device.

The system takes performing characteristics from bio robotics experience,

and the biophysical data are measured and stored using the principles of
robotics and tele-robotics.
Menu options are arranged as:
 Choice of test
 Return to the main menu
 Storing of results
 Communication of data
 Starting and closing of the system

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8. PROTOCOLS OF TEST

 Fast Movement:
Starting from a fixed point of initial reference, the person must use the
index finger to touch as fast as possible the target which measures the
impressed force; in parallel, other parameters are measured, as the angular
position, the speed of finger and the time of reaction.

 Movement with Virtual control:

The person looks at a virtual image on a graphical display of his own
finger and when he touches real target, then the virtual one changes color
indicating that it has been caught up and this is the end of the test.

 Immediate Vocal Reaction:

The person doesn’t have to push the button must perform an
immediate reading test. In this case a visual stimulus that is represented by
a written word will be presented to the person. When this word appears on
this display, the person must immediately read it aloud.

The bio robotic system measures two parameters:

 Fore Period: Time between moment when word is appearing on

the display and the moment person starts pronouncing the word.
This parameter is equivalent to the reaction time measured in the
test of “pushing the button.”

 Duration: time spent to pronounce the word.

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 Delayed Vocal Reaction:

Although the parameters measured are the same, the test performance
method changes. The subject has to wait for a response signal before starting
to speak. In this case, the word is presented in advance on the display prior
to the start signal, and the vocal execution happens when the visual
perception and control brain formulation process have already been
executed. The parameters measured are fore period and duration.

The time collected with the immediate vocal reaction and the delayed
vocal reaction are different because of the performance of the visual
perception and the formulation process in the “working memory.”

In figure below, the fuzzy logic scheme for the evaluation of a disease
starting from kinematics parameters is shown. The same functions for each
fuzzy set (reaction time, speed and force) have been used; they are low,
medium-low, medium, medium-fast, and fast. The state of the disease’s
evolution is caught up by processing these fuzzy set through fuzzy rules in
relation to tremor information that is obtained treating tremor data with a
different set of fuzzy rules.

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FUZZY SET FLOW CHART

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PROTOTYPE OF DDX

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9. CONCLUSIONS

In this article, an innovative bio-robotic system for

neuropsychophysical health-condition detection is presented. Today,
systems of detection are very reliable but not portable and do not generally
allow diagnoses to be sent via the internet.

The proposed fuzzy logic solution is portable without losing

efficiency and accuracy in diagnosis and also provides the ability to transfer
diagnoses through a remote communication interface in order to monitor
the daily health of a patient. The system is an intelligent machine based on
soft computing techniques, and its efficiency can be improved considering
more patterns of examples of functions, calibration, or, moreover, by using
self-learning techniques.

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10. REFERENCE

1. IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, March 2003

2. www.robotica.com

3. www.irobot.com

4. www.ieee.org

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