Estimating Mini Mental State Examination Scores using Game-Specific Performance Values: A Preliminary Study

Annu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2018 Jul:2018:1518-1521. doi: 10.1109/EMBC.2018.8512516.

Abstract

Individuals with permanent cognitive impairment need to be evaluated and monitored. There exists a number of clinically validated cognitive assessment tools, but they often need to be administered by trained therapists in clinical settings. This serves as a major barrier for frequent, longitudinal monitoring of cognitive function. In this work, we introduce Neuro-World, a collection of innovative 3D mobile games, that allows one to self-administer the assessment of his/her cognitive function. The game performance is analyzed and converted into a clinically-accepted measure of cognitive function, specifically the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) score, improving the translational impact of the system in real-world clinical settings. To validate the feasibility of our approach, we collected game-specific performance data from 12 post-stroke patients, which was used to train a supervised machine learning model to estimate the corresponding MMSE score. Our experiment results showed a normalized root mean square error of 5.3% between the actual and estimated MMSE scores. This study enables new clinical and research opportunities for accurate longitudinal assessment of cognitive function via an interactive means of playing mobile games.

MeSH terms

  • Cognitive Dysfunction / diagnosis*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Mental Status Schedule*
  • Mobile Applications*
  • Neuropsychological Tests*
  • Stroke / complications
  • Stroke / psychology*
  • Video Games*