(Image Source: Newsy)

 

BY NATHAN GIANNINI 

ANCHOR CARISSA LOETHEN

 

Parkinson’s is a devastating degenerative disorder often characterized by trembling or rigid movement. There is currently no cure and no concrete method for detection.

But British mathematician and newly-appointed TED Fellow Max Little has developed a new way of testing for the disease.

“It’s possible for us to record the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease and to quantify them, just by using voice signals alone.”

He says Parkinson's affects one’s voice as much as one’s limbs. So he’s created a computer algorithm to analyze voice recordings to find signs of the disease. Little recorded 50 patients with Parkinson’s once a week for six months. Gizmodo reports...

“In recent tests, the software accurately picked out Parkinson’s patients from a random population with 86 percent accuracy.”

According to The Verge, that number rises to 99 percent in the mid to late stages of the disease. Little told the BBC, there are many factors that can change our vocal patterns , including smoking and sickness, so it’s not a simple as just listening for a voice tremor.

“This is machine learning. … we train the database to learn how to separate out the true symptoms of the disease from other factors.”

To do that, the Parkinson’s Voice Initiative is looking for volunteers. The group is hoping to record about 10,000 voices -- both those with Parkinson’s and those without.

Medical News Today details some of the benefits the program could bring Parkinson’s patients, including...

“...drastically reducing clinical visits for checkups, improving individual treatment decisions, and helping to speed up and reduce the costs of recruiting large numbers of volunteers on trials for new treatments.”

If you’re interested in being one of the 10,000, the call takes about three minutes. There’s a link to the phone numbers for seven countries in our transcript section.