Phenotyping Cognitive Impairment using Graphomotor and Latency Features in Digital Clock Drawing Test.

Abstract

The Clock Drawing Test, where the participant is asked to draw a clock from memory and copy a model clock, is widely used for screening of cognitive impairment. The digital version of the clock test, the digital clock drawing test (dCDT), employs accelerometer and pressure sensors of a digital pen to capture time and pressure information from a participant's performance in a granular digital format. While visual features of the clock drawing test have previously been studied, little is known about the relationship between demographic and cognitive impairment characteristics with dCDT latency and graphomotor features. Here, we examine dCDT feature clusters with respect to sociodemographic and cognitive impairment outcomes. Our results show that the clusters are not significantly different in terms of age and gender, but did significantly differ in terms of education, Mini-Mental State Exam scores, and cognitive impairment diagnoses.This study shows that features extracted from digital clock drawings can provide important information regarding cognitive reserve and cognitive impairments.