Optimizing assessments of rate of progression in Parkinson's disease (PD) is important in designing clinical trials, especially for potential disease-modifying agents. Measuring disease progression in PD is challenging, and a variety of tests have been employed for this purpose, including measures of impairment, disability, and quality of life. Nevertheless, a consistently reliable, easy to use measure of disease progression remains elusive, particularly for assessment in the earliest stages of the disease.

Virtual Reality (VR) is an innovative technology that presents the user with interactive, realistic, computer-generated, three-dimensional images. VR enables participants to perform tasks in custom, fully interactive environments that closely resemble activities of daily living. VR also allows for precise tracking of participant's extremities and head to quantitatively assess movement abnormalities such as bradykinesia and tremor, both cardinal symptoms of PD, and dyskinesia, a side effect of PD therapy. Therefore, VR may serve as a possible noninvasive method to quantitatively assess progression of PD.

From this project, we hope to build a VR application containing multiple activities/tests and compare its performance with clinical and molecular imaging methods for prediction of progression in early PD.

Currently, we are developing using Unity and HTC Vive.