Enhancing Mild Cognitive Impairment Auxiliary Identification Through Multimodal Cognitive Assessment with Eye Tracking and Convolutional Neural Network Analysis.

Background: Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) is a critical transitional phase between normal aging and dementia, and early detection is essential to mitigate cognitive decline. Traditional cognitive assessment tools, such as the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), exhibit limitations in feasibility, which potentially and partially affects results for early-stage MCI detection. This study developed and tested a supportive cognitive assessment system for MCI auxiliary identification, leveraging eye-tracking features and convolutional neural network (CNN) analysis.

Methods: The system employed eye-tracking technology in conjunction with machine learning to build a multimodal auxiliary identification model. Four eye movement tasks and two cognitive tests were administered to 128 participants (40 MCI patients, 57 elderly controls, 31 young adults as reference). We extracted 31 eye movement and 8 behavioral features to assess their contributions to classification accuracy using CNN analysis. Eye movement features only, behavioral features only, and combined features models were developed and tested respectively, to find out the most effective approach for MCI auxiliary identification.

Results: Overall, the combined features model achieved a higher discrimination accuracy than models with single feature sets alone. Specifically, the model's ability to differentiate MCI from healthy individuals, including young adults, reached an average accuracy of 74.62%. For distinguishing MCI from elderly controls, the model's accuracy averaged 66.50%.

Conclusions: Results show that a multimodal model significantly outperforms single-feature models in identifying MCI, highlighting the potential of eye-tracking for early detection. These findings suggest that integrating multimodal data can enhance the effectiveness of MCI auxiliary identification, providing a novel potential pathway for community-based early detection efforts.