Dr David Western

Dr David Western

Health tech researcher based at UWE Bristol's Health Tech Hub; Specialist in AI, physiological sensing, and movement analysis; Leader of REACH research group.

TREMTRACE (2012-2014)

Project Summary

This post-doctoral position at University of Bristol, supervised by Prof Simon Neild and Dr Rick Hyde, focussed on two key aims related to tremor in people with multiple sclerosis:

  • Development of a wearable robotic orthosis to suppress tremor and restore independence for activities of daily living.
  • Development and evaluation of an IMU-based motion capture system for precise, detailed, objective evaluation of tremor.

Key findings: The developed orthosis, focussing on tremor at the elbow and using an electromagnetic brake for adaptive friction control, was capable of surpressing tremor, but to do so while satisfying user acceptance criteria (weight, aesthetics, comfort, easy of donning/doffing) was not possible with the technologies available at the time. However, our motion capture system proved effective, by automatically tailoring the tremor severity measurement to the patient’s individual tremor characteristics (distribution of amplitude between the joints). We showed that, unlike the conventional sensor-based and clinical metrics, the newly proposed ’change in scale’ metrics presented statistically significant correlations with changes in self-assessed impact of tremor.

TREMRAC motion capture system - left: user wearing sensors; right: screenshot of software application

  1. Western et al (2019) Personalised profiling to identify clinically relevant changes in tremor due to multiple sclerosis. BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making [online]. 19 (1), p. 162.
  2. Western et al (2012) Characterisation of Tremor by Inverse Dynamics ModellingBioengineering 2012. Oxford UK. Oxford UK.
  3. Western et al (2012) ‘Validation of Inverse Dynamics Modelling and Correlation Analysis to Characterise Upper-Limb Tremor’. In: Pons, J.L., Torricelli, D. and Pajaro, M., eds. Converging Clinical and Engineering Research on NeurorehabilitationBiosystems & Biorobotics [online]International Conference on Neurorehabilitation. Toledo, Spain. Toledo, Spain: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, pp. 697–702. Available from: http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-34546-3_113 [Accessed 5 March 2013].
  4. Western et al (2014) Inverse Dynamics Modelling of Upper-Limb Tremor, with Cross-Correlation Analysis. Healthcare Technology Letters [online]. 1 (2), pp. 59–63.
  5. Western et al (2014) Relating Sensor-Based Tremor Metrics to a Conventional Clinical Scale. Proc. IEEE Healthcare Innovation and Point-of-Care Technologies Conference 2014IEEE Healthcare Innovation and Point-of-Care Technologies Conference. Seattle, USA. Seattle, USA, pp. 165–168.