Caregiver: An Application for the First Step in Alzheimer’s Disease Early Diagnosis

Abstract

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is an invasive neurodegenerative disorder that has no cure. The treatment of AD is based on drugs, which must be administered in the early stages of the development of the disease. Therefore, early diagnosis of the disease is of great significance for the efficiency of the treatment. AD is currently diagnosed by the provision of a professional, conducting medical tests, which is not easily accessible. In this paper, we introduce Caregiver, an application that takes initiative by administering Clock Drawing Test (CDT) on mobile devices and facilitates administration of the test in a fun and simple digital environment. Caregiver gives suggestions to its users to seek professional help for treatment of AD based on the score they get from computer feedback on the clock drawings. Conducting the CDT step by step through gamification, Caregiver provides essential healthcare to people that don’t have access to medical faculties. Saving its users data, Caregiver also provides an insight on the progression of the cognitive impairment if present. Its user-friendly interface enables its users to actively interact with the application and obtain more accurate results than conducting the test by themselves. Caregiver evaluates visual inputs of the test using a weighted combination of two different classification models, which decreases the total time to conduct the test, hence providing early diagnosis.