EVALUATE CLINICAL EFFICACY OF BIOCERAMIC TECHNOLOGY ON PSYCHOPATHICALLY RELATED SPASMODIC TORTICOLLIS USING MOTION MEASUREMENTS, COMPUTERIZED ANALYSIS OF FACIAL EMOTIONS AND SPEECH SIGNAL FEATURES

Abstract

Objective: Spasmodic torticollis is a debilitating neurological movement disorder associated with somatization, obsessive-compulsive, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, and anxiety. Usually, clinician had difficulty to precisely and quantitatively describe clinical outcomes using measurements of patients’ facial and neck movements. Methods: Motion speed changes and direction complexity, computerized facial emotion and assessment, measurement of speech signal features are the quantitative measurements of patients’ head motions, facial expressions, and speech signal features analysis were used to assess clinical effects of bioceramic resonance and photoluminescence of bioceramics (BR&PLB) treatment of psychopathically related spasmodic torticollis. Results: After BR&PLB treatment, there were significant improvements in involuntary movements of patients with spasmodic torticollis measured by motion speed changes and direction complexity (MSCDC). Furthermore, a computerized facial emotion assessment (CFEA) showed that patients expressed greater positive emotions after treatment. Finally, we also performed quantitative assessments on voice analysis of speech signal features (SSF). Conclusions: Our study had achieved three major factors: (i) the clinical efficacy of BR&PLB on psychopathically related spasmodic torticollis; (ii) motion manifestations of spasmodic torticollis in “speed” and “direction” of muscular movements as assessed using “motion measurements” of a computer vision system; and (iii) psychological and emotional factors being directly correlated with the severity of spasmodic torticollis which improved after BR&PLB, and could be qualitatively assessed using FaceReader. This study encourages further investigations of the clinical efficacy of Bioceramic technology on psychopathically related repetitive behavior disorders, and demonstrates effectiveness of MSCDC, CFEA and SSF in providing quantitative assessments of emotion.