Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed an artificial intelligence system that can diagnose Parkinson’s disease and its severity by examining a patient’s nightly breathing patterns.
The system, developed by a team at MIT's Jameel Clinic headed by Syrian-born digital health expert Prof Dina Katabi, can detect Parkinson’s earlier than ever before.
Prof Katabi told The National that early detection is vital for managing symptoms of the disorder and reducing patient suffering through the worst of them.
“We mostly diagnose Parkinson’s today through the motor symptoms that it is known for, tremors, stiffness etc,” she said.
“The problem is that the onset of the disease is five to 10 years before these symptoms show, so by the time they manifest it’s too late to do any more than just manage the symptoms.”
Parkinson’s is caused by the death of cells in the substantia nigra, a small region of the midbrain that is responsible for dopamine production, an essential neurochemical for a wide range of functions, including movement and cognitive ability.
Prof Katabi said early-stage diagnostic data for the illness has so far been very limited as it was often expensive and invasive to acquire.
In the absence of more data about its early phase, treatments have been unable to do more than just remove the worst of the motor symptoms for a few hours.
“There is really only one drug that we have for treating PD, however, it is merely symptomatic and does little to stop the actual disease from progressing and patients’ condition just gets worse with time,” said Prof Katabi.
In 1819, English surgeon James Parkinson became the first medical professional to conclusively diagnose the disorder in “An Essay on the Shaking Palsy”.
Prof Katabi found observations in these writings that the breathing of patients changed when they developed Parkinson's, which inspired her team to look further into the matter.
She said there have also been more recent medical studies on PD that proved that respiratory symptoms were evident years before motor symptoms.
To measure patients’ nocturnal breathing patterns, Prof Katabi’s team used a contactless device she had developed nine years previously to monitor the condition of patients with various other illnesses.
The device, called Emerald, emits radio signals around the patient and measures how they reflect off their bodies, allowing it to record important metrics such as heart rate, breathing patterns and whether the patient is sleeping.
The Force meets Superman's X-ray vision
“We discovered that radio waves were kind of like The Force in Star Wars — they are always around unseen. And because we are made up mostly of water, our bodies and their functions are able to affect the way radio waves move around us in measurable ways,” Dr Katabi told The National, as she pointed to a device the size of a Wi-Fi router mounted on her wall.
“Once we understood it that way, it was something akin to Superman’s X-ray vision, we could use the tech to monitor people’s sleeping patterns, their heartbeats. We could basically see people and measure their movements through walls.”
The device feeds all the information it collects into a neural network developed by Ms Katabi’s team, which analyses the data and informs the team whether a patient has Parkinson's and, if so, how advanced it is.
The AI model was trained through the input of data from 11,964 nights, with more than 120,000 hours of nocturnal breathing signals from 757 Parkinson's subjects and 6,914 control subjects.
Ms Katabi said that while the machine knows what to look for in someone’s breathing data to accurately diagnose Parkinson’s, it lacks the ability to inform her team what that key metric is.
“Even if you have the best Parkinson’s expert in the world, you can’t just give them a breathing signal and ask whether this person has Parkinson’s or not,” she said.
“They would not have an answer. The machine can see patterns that are very difficult for us humans to see, because they are sporadic or minute, or because they are a small part of a complex mechanism that we don’t understand yet.”
The fact that the device is contactless and non-invasive will expedite clinical trials for PD treatments significantly.
It allows doctors to monitor patients in a natural state and not while they are hooked up to cumbersome brainwave-measuring machines.
In June, the World Health Organisation said Parkinson’s was the fastest-growing neurological disease, with a prevalence that has doubled in the past 25 years.
Parkinson's affects about 10 million people worldwide and is the second most common neurological disease after Alzheimer’s.
UAE v Gibraltar
What: International friendly
When: 7pm kick off
Where: Rugby Park, Dubai Sports City
Admission: Free
Online: The match will be broadcast live on Dubai Exiles’ Facebook page
UAE squad: Lucas Waddington (Dubai Exiles), Gio Fourie (Exiles), Craig Nutt (Abu Dhabi Harlequins), Phil Brady (Harlequins), Daniel Perry (Dubai Hurricanes), Esekaia Dranibota (Harlequins), Matt Mills (Exiles), Jaen Botes (Exiles), Kristian Stinson (Exiles), Murray Reason (Abu Dhabi Saracens), Dave Knight (Hurricanes), Ross Samson (Jebel Ali Dragons), DuRandt Gerber (Exiles), Saki Naisau (Dragons), Andrew Powell (Hurricanes), Emosi Vacanau (Harlequins), Niko Volavola (Dragons), Matt Richards (Dragons), Luke Stevenson (Harlequins), Josh Ives (Dubai Sports City Eagles), Sean Stevens (Saracens), Thinus Steyn (Exiles)
In-demand jobs and monthly salaries
- Technology expert in robotics and automation: Dh20,000 to Dh40,000
- Energy engineer: Dh25,000 to Dh30,000
- Production engineer: Dh30,000 to Dh40,000
- Data-driven supply chain management professional: Dh30,000 to Dh50,000
- HR leader: Dh40,000 to Dh60,000
- Engineering leader: Dh30,000 to Dh55,000
- Project manager: Dh55,000 to Dh65,000
- Senior reservoir engineer: Dh40,000 to Dh55,000
- Senior drilling engineer: Dh38,000 to Dh46,000
- Senior process engineer: Dh28,000 to Dh38,000
- Senior maintenance engineer: Dh22,000 to Dh34,000
- Field engineer: Dh6,500 to Dh7,500
- Field supervisor: Dh9,000 to Dh12,000
- Field operator: Dh5,000 to Dh7,000
What are the influencer academy modules?
- Mastery of audio-visual content creation.
- Cinematography, shots and movement.
- All aspects of post-production.
- Emerging technologies and VFX with AI and CGI.
- Understanding of marketing objectives and audience engagement.
- Tourism industry knowledge.
- Professional ethics.
Brief scoreline:
Liverpool 5
Keita 1', Mane 23', 66', Salah 45' 1, 83'
Huddersfield 0
Series info
Test series schedule 1st Test, Abu Dhabi: Sri Lanka won by 21 runs; 2nd Test, Dubai: Play starts at 2pm, Friday-Tuesday
ODI series schedule 1st ODI, Dubai: October 13; 2nd ODI, Abu Dhabi: October 16; 3rd ODI, Abu Dhabi: October 18; 4th ODI, Sharjah: October 20; 5th ODI, Sharjah: October 23
T20 series schedule 1st T20, Abu Dhabi: October 26; 2nd T20, Abu Dhabi: October 27; 3rd T20, Lahore: October 29
Tickets Available at www.q-tickets.com
Stat Fourteen Fourteen of the past 15 Test matches in the UAE have been decided on the final day. Both of the previous two Tests at Dubai International Stadium have been settled in the last session. Pakistan won with less than an hour to go against West Indies last year. Against England in 2015, there were just three balls left.
Key battle - Azhar Ali v Rangana Herath Herath may not quite be as flash as Muttiah Muralitharan, his former spin-twin who ended his career by taking his 800th wicket with his final delivery in Tests. He still has a decent sense of an ending, though. He won the Abu Dhabi match for his side with 11 wickets, the last of which was his 400th in Tests. It was not the first time he has owned Pakistan, either. A quarter of all his Test victims have been Pakistani. If Pakistan are going to avoid a first ever series defeat in the UAE, Azhar, their senior batsman, needs to stand up and show the way to blunt Herath.
MATCH INFO
Uefa Champions League semi-final:
First leg: Liverpool 5 Roma 2
Second leg: Wednesday, May 2, Stadio Olimpico, Rome
TV: BeIN Sports, 10.45pm (UAE)
Roger Federer's record at Wimbledon
Roger Federer's record at Wimbledon
1999 - 1st round
2000 - 1st round
2001 - Quarter-finalist
2002 - 1st round
2003 - Winner
2004 - Winner
2005 - Winner
2006 - Winner
2007 - Winner
2008 - Finalist
2009 - Winner
2010 - Quarter-finalist
2011 - Quarter-finalist
2012 - Winner
2013 - 2nd round
2014 - Finalist
2015 - Finalist
2016 - Semi-finalist
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
THE SPECS
Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8
Transmission: seven-speed dual clutch
Power: 710bhp
Torque: 770Nm
Speed: 0-100km/h 2.9 seconds
Top Speed: 340km/h
Price: Dh1,000,885
On sale: now
Bharatanatyam
A ancient classical dance from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Intricate footwork and expressions are used to denote spiritual stories and ideas.
360Vuz PROFILE
Date started: January 2017
Founder: Khaled Zaatarah
Based: Dubai and Los Angeles
Sector: Technology
Size: 21 employees
Funding: $7 million
Investors: Shorooq Partners, KBW Ventures, Vision Ventures, Hala Ventures, 500Startups, Plug and Play, Magnus Olsson, Samih Toukan, Jonathan Labin
The years Ramadan fell in May
The bio
Favourite book: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Favourite travel destination: Maldives and south of France
Favourite pastime: Family and friends, meditation, discovering new cuisines
Favourite Movie: Joker (2019). I didn’t like it while I was watching it but then afterwards I loved it. I loved the psychology behind it.
Favourite Author: My father for sure
Favourite Artist: Damien Hurst
Wicked
Director: Jon M Chu
Stars: Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jonathan Bailey