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- AI tool VisionMD found subtle Parkinson’s tremors that doctors missed 95% of the time.
- VisionMD did “excellent agreement” with neurologists in a study with more than 160 people.
- AI tools such as VisionMD might help fill gaps in healthcare access. This is true especially in areas that don’t have many doctors or are in the country.
- Being too dependent on AI could mean doctors miss problems or give wrong treatments if they don’t check the AI’s findings.
- VisionMD lets people record videos with a smartphone. Then the AI gives a quick check. This helps telemedicine grow.
Finding Parkinson’s disease early matters a lot for managing it. But the disease starts quietly, and its signs are not always the same. This often means people get diagnosed later. Artificial intelligence shows promise in making diagnosis better, especially with new tools like VisionMD. This tool looks at video to find early signs of movement problems. As these smart tools get better, we look at how AI for movement disorders might change neurology. It won’t replace doctors, but help them.
Parkinson’s Diagnosis Now
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a brain disorder that gets worse over time and mostly affects how people move. The disease comes on slowly. Early signs include small shakes, stiff arms or legs, slow movement, and small changes in how someone stands or looks. These first signs can look like normal aging or other health issues. So, Parkinson’s is often not found until it has gotten worse.
Doctors used to use tools like the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS). This tool is based on watching the patient. It includes how they think, what they do every day, their movement skills, and problems from treatment (Goetz et al., 2008). UPDRS is still the main tool, but it relies a lot on what the doctor sees. It also depends a lot on the doctor’s skill and things like the patient’s past health, mood, and other sicknesses.
More and more people need healthcare. Also, the number of older people is growing, and there aren’t enough neurologists in many places. This shows we need ways to diagnose that are widely available, objective, and correct. Artificial Intelligence (AI) seems like a strong helper. This is true especially when it’s used to understand movement problems from something easy to get, like a video.
Meet VisionMD: The AI Tool That Watches Movement Problems
VisionMD is an AI system for movement problems. It’s made to check for brain conditions using video. It was built to find Parkinson’s disease. This tool uses special computer programs trained on thousands of hours of patient videos. The system looks at small twitches in face muscles, problems standing steady, slow starts to movements, and movements a person can’t control. Many of these are too small for people to see well, especially during short doctor visits.
Older neurology tools need touch or take a lot of time. VisionMD works without touching the patient. Doctors or people caring for the patient can use a smartphone or computer camera to record a short video.
The video should show the person doing normal things (like walking, sitting, or moving their hands). Then the video is put into the tool. The AI checks it in seconds. It looks at the movements it sees and compares them to its huge database. This helps it find movement problems that match Parkinson’s.
Being fast, remote, and accurate makes VisionMD a useful addition for doctors.
Why Parkinson’s Diagnosis Needs Help
The signs of Parkinson’s are different for different patients. This makes it hard for even very skilled doctors to diagnose. A small shake when a patient is resting might be easy to spot in one person. But in another person, slow early movement might be thought to be from joint problems, being tired, or side effects from medicine.
Another issue is that signs can be different. Signs not related to movement, like feeling sad, changes in thinking, or trouble sleeping, can show up years before movement problems. But these are not clear signs of early PD.
It is common to diagnose early Parkinson’s wrong. This happens in 15% to 35% of cases, depending on where the patient is seen. Wrong diagnoses can cause stress, treatments that don’t work, or getting medicines that are not needed. And then, finding the disease late means losing time to manage it while it’s getting worse. Treatments that might help the brain could be used early in the disease.
AI tools like VisionMD can give numbers and show how likely a person is to have the disease. This makes diagnosis clearer. They can’t do everything a human exam can do. But they offer important help. They give doctors a view that doesn’t favor one thing over another and doesn’t get tired or miss patterns.
AI Accuracy vs. Human Skill: What Is Better?
One good thing about AI in neurology is how much information it can process. VisionMD learned from thousands of checked patient videos. It gets better all the time by learning. VisionMD found Parkinson’s shakes that experienced neurologists missed 95% of the time. Even small movements that were hard to see during a live check were found and marked by the software.
When AI was tested against medical experts, it was as good as, and sometimes better than, doctors at finding movement patterns that matched Parkinson’s. It checks cases the same way every time. It doesn’t get tired, feel rushed, or have biases. This makes VisionMD extra helpful for finding the disease early, when doctors make mistakes most often.
But human skill is still needed. AI only looks at movement from video. A doctor looks at the whole patient. This includes their health past, how they think, what medicines they take, personal and social factors, and other possible sicknesses. The best way to diagnose in the future is by using both perspectives.
Based on Research: Testing VisionMD with Real Patients
Testing is very important for any medical tool, especially one meant to help doctors diagnose. VisionMD was tested in a strong study with more than 160 people. This group included people diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and healthy people. Three neurologists who work with movement disorders watched and scored each video. What these doctors all agreed on was used as the main standard.
VisionMD’s AI scores were then compared to what the expert doctors agreed on. The system showed “excellent agreement” with the expert group. This showed it is reliable. It could be a tool used first or as a second check for Parkinson’s disease in studies or regular visits.
This close match with human experts is a big step. It shows that AI can actually be used outside of schools or tests.
More Than Parkinson’s: Checking for Other Movement Problems
Parkinson’s is a main goal for VisionMD. But the tool’s basic abilities mean it could find a wide range of brain problems. The computer program learns to spot unusual motions, not signs specific to just one disease. So, it can be trained or changed to check for other diseases like:
- Essential Tremor (ET): This is often confused with Parkinson’s. ET causes shaking when a person is moving, not when they are resting. AI can help tell these two apart better.
- Atypical Parkinsonism (e.g., PSP, MSA): These conditions have movement problems that are like Parkinson’s but different. Telling them apart early helps patients and guides treatment.
- Huntington’s Disease: This causes movements a person can’t control, like jerking. This disease runs in families. AI could help find it early by spotting motion problems.
- Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS): This mostly affects strength and coordination. But finding motor decline early is very important.
- Dystonia: AI can find strange muscle tightening or twisting movements that doctors might not notice during a normal check.
VisionMD is a general tool for movement problems. It can change as it gets new data. Eventually, it could offer different ways to diagnose problems all in the same tool.
How Doctors Can Use It and Where It’s Used
AI tools like VisionMD are useful beyond just studies. It’s made so it can be used in different ways:
- Regular Doctor Offices: Doctors who are not specialists can upload patient videos for the AI to check before sending the patient to a neurologist. This helps them see patients more effectively.
- Doctor Visits by Video: AI checks add facts to online visits where doctors can’t do a physical exam.
- Watching Progress: Checking videos over time can show how a disease is changing and if treatment is working.
- Checks at Home: Family or health tools people wear can record movement data at home. This gives a more natural picture of how the patient is doing all the time.
- Research Studies: Standard ways to check movement make it easier to pick people for studies and measure results.
These uses make VisionMD a helpful answer. This is true especially where there aren’t many resources or expert neurologists.
Thinking About What’s Right: Problems from Wrong Diagnoses or Using AI Too Much
Using AI in healthcare must follow strict rules about what is right and wrong. Some worries come up when using AI to diagnose Parkinson’s:
- False Positives: Saying a healthy person has the disease is wrong. It can cause needless worry, expensive follow-up visits, and maybe getting harmful medicines.
- False Negatives: Missing early signs means treatment is delayed. This leads to things getting worse.
- Hard to Understand How it Works: Often, these AI computer programs are like “black boxes.” It’s hard for doctors or patients to know how the AI reached its conclusion.
- Telling Patients What’s Happening: Patients must know they are being checked by AI and what that means.
- Keeping Data Private and Safe: Video data shows who a person is. It must be stored and sent safely.
To lower these risks, AI should be used to help doctors. It should not make decisions alone. Doctors are still responsible for any choices made. They must be taught to know what these tools are good at and what they cannot do.
Helping Everyone: Could AI Reduce Differences in Brain Care?
Around the world, there are not enough trained neurologists. This is especially true in poorer countries. In many places, people wait months or travel hours just to see a doctor. AI video tools could greatly change who can get care:
- Checking from Far Away: Community health workers can send videos from country towns.
- Checks That Don’t Cost a Lot: No need for expensive scans (like MRI or DaTscan) or travel to cities.
- Making Doctors’ Time Go Further: One specialist can help many more patients without seeing them directly. This is done through the AI checks.
So, VisionMD acts like a digital tool that helps everyone. It makes the quality of diagnosis the same no matter where someone lives. It makes care fair and helps everyone get similar results, no matter how much money they have.
Humans and AI Working Together: Not One or the Other
VisionMD and other AI tools like it should not take the place of neurologists. Instead, they should be seen as tools that work with doctors. They make doctors’ work better. They act like digital helpers that lower the chance of doctors missing things. They make diagnosis more consistent. And they give a trusted “second opinion.”
This help is extra important when:
- Finding the disease early needs checks often.
- Doctors are tired or see too many patients.
- Problems are complex and need many different checks.
The future is about working together. AI is good at finding patterns. Humans have good judgment and care. By putting these together, diagnosis can be more accurate. And patients can get better results.
Things That Stop It from Being Used Everywhere
Tools like VisionMD are showing they work well. But things still need to be fixed before they are used widely.
- Getting Approved: Getting approval from groups like the FDA means showing it is safe and reliable for all kinds of people.
- Fitting into Doctor’s Offices: The tools need to be easy to get to within the systems doctors already use for patient records.
- Training Needed: Doctors and staff must know how to understand what the AI shows. They also need to know when to disagree with it.
- Handling Data: Taking care of patient video data needs safe systems that follow rules about privacy.
- Cost: Using it everywhere will depend on prices that people can afford. This is especially true in public health systems.
To fix these problems, the people who make the tools, the groups that approve them, doctors, and people who study what’s right must work together.
Looking Ahead: What’s Next for AI in Diagnosing Brain Problems
Artificial intelligence is just starting to show what it can do for healthcare. Later versions of VisionMD might work with health tools people wear or phone apps. This would allow constant checking, not just one-time checks. Tools could also guess how movement will get worse. This would let doctors give treatments to stop or slow problems in time.
AI that checks from far away could also help choose people for research studies. It could watch if treatments are working in real time. And it could fit treatments to what each person needs. Brain diseases like Parkinson’s affect people very differently as they get worse. This kind of personal care could change how we manage long-term sicknesses.
Tools like VisionMD bring in a new time. In this time, decisions are based more on data. Diagnosis happens earlier. And care is available to more people. It’s not a replacement for human skill, but it helps it.
