Tool for the Evaluation of a Rehabilitation Protocol for Parkinson's Disease

This repository provides a MATLAB-based software tool designed for the objective evaluation of rehabilitation protocols for individuals with Parkinson’s Disease. The tool was developed and validated within the context of a biomedical engineering undergraduate thesis and focuses on the automated processing and analysis of surface electromyography (sEMG) signals acquired during upper-limb motor tasks. The platform supports the assessment of rehabilitation protocols based on serious games, enabling quantitative comparison between pre- and post-intervention sessions, as well as between experimental and control groups. It integrates a modular architecture that includes signal preprocessing, feature extraction, statistical analysis, and graphical visualization through an intuitive graphical user interface (GUI) implemented in MATLAB. The tool allows the extraction of multiple sEMG features in the time, frequency, and nonlinear domains, including RMS, MVC-related metrics, spectral parameters, kurtosis, Katz fractal dimension, Teager–Kaiser Energy Operator–based measures, and muscle activation indices. Additionally, it incorporates statistical methods and an algorithm for detecting significant differences between sessions, supporting objective evaluation of motor performance changes induced by rehabilitation interventions. The software was validated using experimental data collected from patients with Parkinson’s Disease performing standardized upper-limb motor tests (e.g., Box and Block Test and Nine Hole Peg Test) before and after a rehabilitation protocol involving a serious game, as well as from a control group undergoing conventional therapy. This tool is intended for researchers, clinicians, and developers working in neurorehabilitation, biomedical signal processing, and digital health, offering a reproducible and objective framework for evaluating rehabilitation effectiveness in Parkinson’s Disease.