Making Sense of Alzheimer's disease
The SenseCam was invented in 1999 by Lyndsay Williams, a researcher at Microsoft's research laboratory. It is a wearable camera that automatically captures thousands of images over a day that can be replayed in minutes and may prove to be instrumental in helping patients with Alzheimer's disease.
A wearable camera invented by Microsoft researchers is being trialled to see if it could help people with Alzheimer's disease.
The SenseCam automatically captures thousands of images over a day that can be downloaded and replayed in minutes.
It has already helped a woman with severe amnesia to recapture memories, by repeatedly reviewing the images with her husband. Now, it is being tested with a handful of people with Alzheimer's disease.
Steve Hodges, who is working on the joint research project with Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, says: "One of the things that is affected by Alzheimer's is memory, so we hope this might help them.
"It is a very exciting prospect, because we know the burden of Alzheimer's is growing, and technology is likely to be increasingly important in coping with that.
"At the same time, we are in the very early stages of the research. We still have a lot to find out, including whether this can help with all kinds of memory loss, what the best way to use the technology is and how often the images need to be reviewed."
The SenseCam was invented in 1999 by Lyndsay Williams, a researcher at Microsoft's Cambridge research laboratory, who was interested in building something to solve simple memory problems, such as losing keys.
The device has a wide angle lens that allows images to be captured without the wearer having to step out of their daily lives to focus the camera. It has already been shown to benefit a woman with severe amnesia as the result of a brain infection.
The woman was able to recapture memories by repeatedly reviewing images from the SenseCam with her husband - who also benefited from the `sheer pleasure' of being able to re-establish shared memories with his wife.
Mr Hodges says one of the interesting aspects of her experience is that she was eventually able to retrieve the memories herself.
"Why did she have memory loss?" he says. "Was it because she couldn't create memories, or because she couldn't recall them? It looks as if she couldn't recall them, but SenseCam helped her to do that."
The first results from the very early trials of SenseCam with Alzheimer's patients should be available later this year.
The Alzheimer's Society estimates that dementia affects 750,000 people in the UK, and one in 20 of the population aged 65 and over.
The number of people with dementia is increasing as the population ages. Around 870,000 people will be affected by 2010 and 1.8 million by 2050. This makes finding cost-effective responses essential.
Microsoft Research is also hoping to create a BioSenseCam that records images in response to changes in skin condition that equate to emotions such as anger or arousal. Location recording and heart rate monitoring are also being explored.
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