Preliminary Evaluation of Active Tremor Cancellation Spoon for Patients with Hand Tremor

Abstract

Abstract Hand-arm tremor is common in Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients and essential tremor (ET) and can result in difficulty of carrying out daily tasks such as eating and writing. One of the approaches to overcome this is the application active tremor cancellation (ATC) to attenuate the vibration due to the hand tremor on the device hold by the hand. There are several ATC spoons in the market which are meant to help the patient to eat however third-party evaluation of the effectiveness of this technology could not be found in the literature. This study evaluates Liftware, a spoon with ATC by measuring the acceleration performance of the spoon over the frequency range of 1-12 Hz which adequately covers both the PD and ET. In the first part of the study, the device was evaluated on the isolation index throughout the tested range of frequency along the vertical or gravitational, and the horizontal directions, the direction perpendicular to both gravitational and the longitudinal axis. Subsequently, the device was evaluated for the limit at which the food it contains start to spill. Solid food, typically boiled peas and liquid, namely curry was the food tested with the spoon. Ten measurements were carried out for each type of food and the average limits prior to spillage was presented. The results show that the isolation indices in vertical and horizontal directions range from 0.06 to 0.63 and 0.06 to 0.62 respectively at frequency range of 3-12Hz. The limits of the spoon in supporting the boiled peas and curry are 1.4g and 0.9g respectively. However, the preliminary study provides part of the knowledge useful for the potential users and researchers. Further study to subject the device under different conditions, especially in clinical settings is required.