Kinematic and Pressure Features of Handwriting and Drawing: Preliminary Results Between Patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment, Alzheimer Disease and Healthy Controls

Abstract

Background: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common neurodegenerative dementia of old age, and the leading chronic disease contributor to disability and dependence among older people worldwide. Clinically, AD is characterized by a progressive cognitive decline that interferes with the abil-ity to perform the activities of daily living. Handwriting and drawing are complex human activities that entail an intricate blend of cognitive, kinesthetic, and perceptual-motor features.Objective: To compare the kinematic characteristics of handwriting and drawing between patients with AD, patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and healthy controls.Methods: We used a cross-sectional and observational design to assess the kinematic and pressure fea-tures of handwriting and drawing using a computerized system. Participants were asked to copy one sen-tence, write a dictated sentence and an own sentence, copy two and-three dimensions drawings, and to execute the clock drawing test. By means of discriminant analyses, we explored the value of several kin-ematic features in order to classify participants depending on their degree of cognitive functioning.Results: The sample consisted of 52 participants (23 AD, 12 MCI, and 17 healthy controls) with a mean age of 69.7 years (SD=8.11). The degree of correct classification was largely dependent on the nature of the groups to be classified and the specific task, and ranged between 63.5% and 100%. Diagnostic accu-racy based on kinematic measures showed higher specificity values for distinguishing between normal and impaired cognition (MCI and AD), and higher sensitivity was obtained when distinguishing between impaired cognition levels (MCI vs. AD).Conclusion: The kinematic features of writing and drawing procedures, rather than the final product, may be a useful and objective complement to the clinical assessment of patients with cognitive impairment.

Dynamic Handwriting Analysis for Neurodegenerative Disease Assessment: A Literary Review

“…Complexity increases in the intersecting pentagon copying task, which is part of the MMSE test. Patients, in fact, typically exhibit constructional apraxia: drawing may contain fewer angles, spatial alterations, lack of perspective, and simplifications [31]. Patients can be unable to perform the task even if they understand what they should do.…”

“…In particular, they typically show different drawing strategies: some trace the contours of the figure to be copied, others put points first and then connect them with segments, and so on. These issues can be reflected in the dynamic features of handwriting [31,32].…”

“…Garre-Olmo et al [31] compared the dynamic characteristics of handwriting and drawing between patients with probable AD and MCI and healthy controls. Participants were asked to copy one sentence, to write a dictated sentence and an own sentence, to copy two and-three dimensions drawings, and to execute the Clock Drawing Test.…”

Multiple classifiers in biometrics. Part 2: Trends and challenges

“…Pattern recognition applications based on biometrics are usually intended for securing information or control the access to services or places [2]. Note this is not the only usage possible, as biometric technologies may be also used to analyze personal data towards other objectives, like behaviour analysis [80] or medical diagnosis [81].…”

Unsupervised learning for characterization of Arabic online handwriting of Parkinson’s disease patients

“…Handwriting (HW) is a complex activity requiring fine motor control, it is characterized by a major involvement of muscles and brain, and touches the deepest mechanisms of cognition and sensorimotor. The HW alteration is mostly due to neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer [1][2][3], and Parkinson's Disease (PD) [4][5][6][7].…”