Parkinson's Diagnosed By Voice Analysis Project

Sciencenews

25 Jun

Parkinson's disease currently has no cure, is difficult to diagnose, and is an agonising condition for those living with it. This is where Applied mathematician Max Little comes in, as he introduced his fascinating work into spotting Parkinson's simply by analysing a person's voice.

The system Max has created at Oxford University detects different nuances in voice patterns, learning from the vast amount of data collected to (within the next two years (hopefully)) detect someone with a high risk of having Parkinson's, or make a straight diagnosis. This is to tackle the high improbability of spotting the aforementioned condition, due to it being undetectable by many biomarkers such as blood tests.

His project, The Parkinson's Voice Initiative, is seeking volunteers to contribute to the refining of his voice recognition algorithms. 10,000 to be exact, from 10 different countries. The UK telephone number is 01865 521168, if you'd like to contribute to the PVI. But anybody can participate from the likes of USA, Argentina, Spain or Brazil at the group's website.