Cabestany, Joan

Suppa, Antonio

ÓLaighin, Gearóid

English

ÓLaighin, Gearóid

Archivio della ricerca- Università di Roma La Sapienza

TYPE EditorialPUBLISHED 14 February 2023DOI 10.3389/fneur.2023.1151858OPEN ACCESSEDITED AND REVIEWED BYAnthony L. Vaccarino,Indoc Research, Canada*CORRESPONDENCEJoan Cabestanyjoan.cabestany@upc.eduSPECIALTY SECTIONThis article was submitted toMovement Disorders,a section of the journalFrontiers in NeurologyRECEIVED 26 January 2023ACCEPTED 30 January 2023PUBLISHED 14 February 2023CITATIONCabestany J, Suppa A and ÓLaighin G (2023)Editorial: Parkinson’s disease: Technologicaltrends for diagnosis and treatmentimprovement. Front. Neurol. 14:1151858.doi: 10.3389/fneur.2023.1151858COPYRIGHT© 2023 Cabestany, Suppa and ÓLaighin. This isan open-access article distributed under theterms of the Creative Commons AttributionLicense (CC BY). The use, distribution orreproduction in other forums is permitted,provided the original author(s) and thecopyright owner(s) are credited and that theoriginal publication in this journal is cited, inaccordance with accepted academic practice.No use, distribution or reproduction ispermitted which does not comply with theseterms.Editorial: Parkinson’s disease:Technological trends for diagnosisand treatment improvementJoan Cabestany1,2*, Antonio Suppa3,4 and Gearóid ÓLaighin51Department of Electronic Engineering, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, Spain,2Sense4Care, Cornellà de Llobregat, Spain, 3Department of Human Neurosciences, Sapienza University ofRome, Rome, Italy, 4IRCCS Neuromed Institute, Pozzili, Italy, 5Department of Electric and ElectronicEngineering, University of Galway, Galway, IrelandKEYWORDSParkinson’s disease, inertial measurement unit, sensors, artificial intelligence, technology,image analysis, voice analysisEditorial on the Research TopicParkinson’s disease: Technological trends for diagnosis andtreatment improvementParkinson’s Disease (PD) is a very complex condition, presenting a wide range of motorand non-motor symptoms. It is considered the second neurodegenerative condition, afterAlzheimer’s Disease, in terms of prevalence, and some recent studies announce a drastic rising inthe number of affected persons in the coming years. PD has no cure and its progression is alwaysineluctable. According to normal medical praxis, after the initial diagnosis, a pharmacologicaltreatment is commonly started to improve the Quality of Life (QoL) of the affected person.Nowadays, neurologists and related professionals can obtain benefits from the use ofcorrectly addressed technologies. These possible benefits can help them in three different axes:(a) early detection of the disease for early initiation of the possible treatment, (b) obtainingadditional objective information for a better adjustment of the treatment and (c) identificationof candidates for advanced device-aided therapies (Second-line therapies—SLT) like Deep BrainStimulation (DBS) or infusion pumps.The present Research Topic entitled “Parkinson’s Disease: Technological Trends for Diagnosisand Treatment Improvement” explores the contribution of technology, considered in a widesense, to the improvement of healthcare services in the domain of PD. The 10 manuscriptsincluded in this Research Topic deal with very different aspects and approaches, but all of themconcern the improvement of the current treatments, the consideration of a new therapy or otherconsiderations that can contribute to improving the QoL of the patients or their awareness aboutthe disease.A commonly reported and accepted difficulty that neurologists note, during the diagnosisand follow-up patients’ visits, is the difficulty that many of them have to correctly identifyand report their symptoms and the main states and temporal evolution of their condition.Timpka et al. present the conclusions about the observed discrepancies in the Home-diary annotations done by the patients participating in the study and those done by thequalified observers. The paper formulates a question about when the community will havethe availability of an automatic or objective Home-diary, based on the technology. In thisregard, the papers by Rodríguez-Martin et al., Zhang et al., and Geritz et al. contribute tothis aspect. The first one presents a complete review of an already available CE-markedmedical device that is commercialized to become a real Holter for the monitorization ofthe PD-related motor symptoms in real-life conditions. This solution is based on IMU andMachine Learning algorithms. In the other papers, the authors use IMU and MEMS-basedFrontiers inNeurology 01 frontiersin.orgCabestany et al. 10.3389/fneur.2023.1151858technology for the identification of gait parameters permittingto distinguish and identify people affected by PD or topredict spatio-temporal walking parameters in hospitalizedPD patients.Apart from the above-mentioned technologies, many others canbe applied and contribute to the early detection of PD and betterdiagnosis. For example, Suppa et al. address Machine Learningmethods applied to voice disorders recognition for early assessmentof PD and its monitoring along the treatment. An additionalcontribution is the proposal of a new score (the LR value) as anew measure of voice impairment. Another paper by Xu et al.applies phonation tests to persons affected by PD and makes acomparison with those done by healthy people. Comparison isdone on the observation of the facial muscles’ movement usinga concrete commercial image treatment software platform. Inanother context, a better understanding of PD can be obtainedwhen using signal processing analysis of the different bands inthe EEG data of different PD patients. The paper contributedby Conti et al. extracts interesting conclusions on this topic,permitting the advance in the monitoring activity of recentlydiagnosed patients.The rest of the papers contained in the Research Topic dealswith complementary, but very promising usage of the technologyto progress and improve the QoL of patients. For example, theBianchini et al. paper explores the feasibility, safety and effectivenessof telerehabilitation in mild-to-moderate PD patients, demonstratingthat remote physiotherapy programs could be viable and very usefulto overcome situations with limited access to healthcare service (as apandemic situation, for example).Among SLT, DBS can be applied to selected advanced PDpatients, but exhibits some problems in the process of programmingand adjusting the stimulation parameters. Mei et al., apply imageanalysis techniques for the improvement of the DBS programming,concluding that using imaging-guided programming of directionalDBS led to reducing programming time and the collection of sideeffects for the patients.Abbreviations: PD, Parkinson’s Disease; IMU, inertial measurement unit; DBS,deep brain stimulation; QoL, quality of life; SLT, second-line therapy; MEMS,microelectromechanical system; FUS, focused ultrasound.The last paper in the Research Topic, corresponds to Baek et al.on the possible future use of Focused Ultrasound (FUS) stimulationfor the treatment of various brain diseases, including PD. The paperdiscusses future possible applications and the related challenges ofthis promising technology.In conclusion, the contents of the present Research Topic allow usto be very confident with the existing and coming technologies. Themain existing challenge is to completely overpass the still-existingadoption barriers. The benefits of the use of the technology will beevident when its adoption by all healthcare actors, including thepatients, will be a reality.Author contributionsJC: conception, design, drafting, and critical revision of theeditorial. AS: conception, design, and critical revision of the editorial.GÓ: critical revision of the editorial. All authors contributed to thearticle and approved the submitted version.Conflict of interestThe authors declare that the research was conducted in theabsence of any commercial or financial relationships that could beconstrued as a potential conflict of interest.Publisher’s noteAll claims expressed in this article are solely those of theauthors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliatedorganizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers.Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that maybe made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by thepublisher.Frontiers inNeurology 02 frontiersin.org

Editorial: Parkinson's disease: Technological trends for diagnosis and treatment improvement

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Editorial: Parkinson's disease: Technological trends for diagnosis and treatment improvement

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