Significant feature descriptors for dementia evaluation using simple graphics

Recently, the number of elderly persons with dementia has been increasing, and this is one of the severe social problems in Japan. In the field of geriatrics, it is usually said that detecting dementia in the early stage is quite important and currently, there are many dementia evaluation methods. For instance, Hasegawa's Dementia Scale for Revised (HDS-R) and Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) are usually employed to evaluate a patients dementia progression in welfare houses. In MMSE, 11 simple questions including a graphics drawing test are used. These dementia check tests, however, require a lot of routine practices for follow-up and as a result, they give much burden to medical/facility staffs. Moreover, it's difficult for dementia patients to draw intricate drawings in the case of graphics drawing test. To solve these problems, the authors aim to develop a dementia evaluation method with simple graphics. As the first step of this study, we propose feature descriptors and discuss which feature descriptor works well for dementia evaluation using graphics drawing test.