Avatar's new medical frontier - 6th February 2023

A team of medical researchers has discovered that motion capture technology, often used for filming blockbuster movies such as Avatar, is useful in the diagnosing and monitoring of genetic movement disorders.

During research, patients donned the wearable tech on their head and around their joints, this fed through to a computer using powerful artificial intelligence (AI) which assessed the patterns of movement. This could then help predict the progression of the different degenerative diseases in individual patients.

What makes motion capture so significant? One of the project's founders, Professor Aldo Faisal of Imperial College, London, declared it "detects subtle movements that humans can't pick up on."

Using motion capture and AI means patients are diagnosed with more precision and accuracy, in addition, it's twice as fast as leading physicians in the field. Doctor Valeria Ricotti exclaimed she was "completely blown away by the results." Testing their system on patients with diseases affecting movement, such as Friedreich's ataxia (FA) and Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), experts were able to gather valuable data.

A rare genetic disease with currently no known cure, one in 50,000 people suffer from FA with symptoms emerging during adolescent years. 20,000 children, predominantly boys, are afflicted by DMD.

There are hopes that the study will convince the pharmaceutical industry to provide funding for further research into rare diseases and the use of motion capture technology. Although investors may not be won over due to the perceived rarity of these conditions, in the UK alone up to, 1 in 17 people has some rare genetic disorder.

Those who have the most to gain from this are the patients, as rapid diagnosis often leads to more personalised and precise treatment. Professor Faisal claims "[Motion capture] has the capability to transform clinical trials as well as improve diagnosis and monitoring for patients."

Researchers will implement motion capture in drug trials for DMD and FA within two years if approved. But they will continue to gather further data for more common diseases like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and multiple sclerosis and this may be what attracts the medical companies to invest further.