(NewsNation) — The Parkinson’s disease world may have just received its next big breakthrough.
Scientists have developed a self-powered pen — with magnetic ink — that can potentially discover early signs of Parkinson’s disease by analyzing handwriting.
“Detection of subtle motor symptoms unnoticeable to the naked eye is critical for early intervention in Parkinson’s disease,” Jun Chen, PhD, an associate professor of bioengineering at the University of California, Los Angeles, told Parkinson’s News Today.
“Our diagnostic pen presents an affordable, reliable, and accessible tool that is sensitive enough to pick up subtle movements and can be used across large populations and in resource-limited areas.”
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With an average accuracy of 96.22%, the pen recorded handwriting signals for patients with Parkinson’s. It also successfully analyzed one-dimensional convolutional neural network-assisted analysis.
“This pen is diagnosing the problem with handwriting, which is just one of the many symptoms that we see in our patients,” Chrystalina Antoniades, University of Oxford, acknowledged to The Guardian. “But it can be complementing what we already found, picking up something that might be difficult to see.”
The pen’s cost is significantly lower than commercial electronic pens for tablets and digital pens for writing pads.
Parkinson’s disease affects 10 million people worldwide.
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