Alzheimer's disease distinction based on gait feature analysis

Alzheimer's disease(AD) is a neurodegenerative disease that progresses slowly but worsens gradually, also, the most common kinds of dementia. Clinically, the diagnosis of AD is mainly based on rating scales and neuroimaging technology which is invasive, costly and time-consuming. Other than that, the clinical pathology has become irreversible when neuroimaging characteristics appear. It is imperative to develop new noninvasive methods for early diagnosis of AD. Several studies indicated the probable association of cognitive decline with gait changes might shed light on potential features for distinction of AD. This paper aims to exploit the feasibility of gait features for early diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment(MCI) and AD by using machine learning methods. A device-free AD detection system is built, with a natural undisturbed gait collecting system and a well-performed Long Short-Term Memory(LSTM) based model, in this article. Moreover, it can serve as a simplified, non-invasive, and highly accurate clinical auxiliary tool for early diagnosis and distinction of AD. Experimental results showed a 90.48%, 92.00%, and 88.24% in accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity respectively for distinguishing AD by using the method with LSTM based model. Furthermore, the gait cycle and stride length in MCI or AD were more variable than in healthy controls through redefining and calculating the gait features with skeleton data obtained by Kinect devices.