Measurement instrument for assessing functional abilities of elderly people with and without dementia using a video monitoring system

This study presents the application of computer vision to health monitoring elderly people, improving the valuable diagnostic of person suffering from dementia symptoms. We propose a framework based on a video monitoring system (VMS) for assessing physical and cognitive abilities of elderly people during a clinical experiment. Recording sessions were divided into two steps: the first for assessing the gait, and the second for assessing cognitive abilities in daily life situations. Results of gait assessment show that patients with Alzheimer Disease (n=16, age =76.7years±4.0, %/W=11(68.75%)) had lower both walking speed and step length than Healthy Control (HC) participants (n=10, age=73.9years±4.5, %/W=5(50%)). From quantitative and qualitative data extracted from the VMS during the second step, a VMS-functional index was computed, validated and compared with current clinical rating scales. Results show that VMSfunctional index was correlated strongly with standard cognitive and functional measurements (MMSE, Rho=.81, and IADL-E scores, Rho=-.65), thus accurately differentiating from healthy control (HC) participants. Results of this pilot study are promising, and need to be substantiated with a larger sample, and in another assessment room for assessing their reproducibility. KeywordsGerontechnology; Alzheimer Disease; Evaluation tool.