MIRA-A Gaze-based Serious Game for Continuous Estimation of Alzheimer's Mental State

Abstract

Persons with Alzheimer's disease demonstrate a dysfunctionality in the continuous tracking of stimuli and are characterized with a significant impairment of their inhibitory functionality of eye movements. In previous work several methodologies of attention analytics were developed with laboratory based eye tracking technology but there is still a lack in providing opportunity for pervasive and continuous tracking of mental state for people still living at home. This work proposes a playful cognitive assessment method based on the antisaccade task. The performance scores of the serious game were analyzed in a field trial with 15 participants being diagnosed with light degree of Alzheimer's disease within a period of 10 weeks. The results present a statistically significant correlation between the game outcome scores and the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) score, the golden standard for the analysis of executive functions in early Alzheimer's disease. This indicates first successful steps towards the daily use of serious games for pervasive assessment of Alzheimer's mental state.