Assessment of Developmental Dysgraphia Utilising a Display Tablet

Even though the computerised assessment of developmental dysgraphia (DD) based on online handwriting processing has increasing popularity, most of the solutions are based on a setup, where a child writes on a paper fixed to a digitizing tablet that is connected to a computer. Although this approach enables the standard way of writing using an inking pen, it is difficult to be administered by children themselves. The main goal of this study is thus to explore, whether the quantitative analysis of online handwriting recorded via a display screen tablet could sufficiently support the assessment of DD as well. For the purpose of this study, we enrolled 144 children (attending the 3rd and 4th class of a primary school), whose handwriting proficiency was assessed by a special education counsellor, and who assessed themselves by the Handwriting Proficiency Screening Questionnaires for Children (HPSQ C). Using machine learning models based on a gradient-boosting algorithm, we were able to support the DD diagnosis with up to 83.6% accuracy. The HPSQ C total score was estimated with a minimum error equal to 10.34 %. Children with DD spent significantly higher time in-air, they had a higher number of pen elevations, a bigger height of on-surface strokes, a lower in-air tempo, and a higher variation in the angular velocity. Although this study shows a promising impact of DD assessment via display tablets, it also accents the fact that modelling of subjective scores is challenging and a complex and data-driven quantification of DD manifestations is needed.

Graphomotor and Handwriting Disabilities Rating Scale (GHDRS):towards complex and objective assessment

Graphomotor and handwriting disabilities (GD and HD, respectively) could significantly reduce children's quality of life. Effective remediation depends on proper diagnosis; however, current approaches to diagnosis and assessment of GD and HD have several limitations and knowledge gaps, e.g. they are subjective, they do not facilitate identification of specific manifestations, etc. The aim of this work is to introduce a new scale (GHDRS Graphomotor and Handwriting Disabilities Rating Scale) that will enable experts to perform objective and complex computeraided diagnosis and assessment of GD and HD. The scale supports quantification of 17 manifestations associated with the process/product of drawing/ handwriting. The whole methodology of GHDRS design is made maximally transparent so that it could be adapted for other languages.

Exploration of Various Fractional Order Derivatives in Parkinson's Disease Dysgraphia Analysis

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a common neurodegenerative disorder with a prevalence rate estimated to 2.0% for people aged over 65 years. Cardinal motor symptoms of PD such as rigidity and bradykinesia affect the muscles involved in the handwriting process resulting in handwriting abnormalities called PD dysgraphia. Nowadays, online handwritten signal (signal with temporal information) acquired by the digitizing tablets is the most advanced approach of graphomotor difficulties analysis. Although the basic kinematic features were proved to effectively quantify the symptoms of PD dysgraphia, a recent research identified that the theory of fractional calculus can be used to improve the graphomotor difficulties analysis. Therefore, in this study, we follow up on our previous research, and we aim to explore the utilization of various approaches of fractional order derivative (FD) in the analysis of PD dysgraphia. For this purpose, we used the repetitive loops task from the Parkinson's disease handwriting database (PaHaW). Handwritten signals were parametrized by the kinematic features employing three FD approximations: Gr\"unwald-Letnikov's, Riemann-Liouville's, and Caputo's. Results of the correlation analysis revealed a significant relationship between the clinical state and the handwriting features based on the velocity. The extracted features by Caputo's FD approximation outperformed the rest of the analyzed FD approaches. This was also confirmed by the results of the classification analysis, where the best model trained by Caputo's handwriting features resulted in a balanced accuracy of 79.73% with a sensitivity of 83.78% and a specificity of 75.68%.

Prodromal Diagnosis of Lewy Body Diseases Based on the Assessment of Graphomotor and Handwriting Difficulties

To this date, studies focusing on the prodromal diagnosis of Lewy body diseases (LBDs) based on quantitative analysis of graphomotor and handwriting difficulties are missing. In this work, we enrolled 18 subjects diagnosed with possible or probable mild cognitive impairment with Lewy bodies (MCI-LB), 7 subjects having more than 50% probability of developing Parkinson's disease (PD), 21 subjects with both possible/probable MCI-LB and probability of PD > 50%, and 37 age- and gender-matched healthy controls (HC). Each participant performed three tasks: Archimedean spiral drawing (to quantify graphomotor difficulties), sentence writing task (to quantify handwriting difficulties), and pentagon copying test (to quantify cognitive decline). Next, we parameterized the acquired data by various temporal, kinematic, dynamic, spatial, and task-specific features. And finally, we trained classification models for each task separately as well as a model for their combination to estimate the predictive power of the features for the identification of LBDs. Using this approach we were able to identify prodromal LBDs with 74% accuracy and showed the promising potential of computerized objective and non-invasive diagnosis of LBDs based on the assessment of graphomotor and handwriting difficulties.

Identification of Hypokinetic Dysarthria Using Acoustic Analysis of Poem Recitation

Up to 90 % of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) suffer from hypokinetic dysarthria (HD). In this work, we analysed the power of conventional speech features quantifying imprecise articulation, dysprosody, speech dysfluency and speech quality deterioration extracted from a specialized poem recitation task to discriminate dysarthric and healthy speech. For this purpose, 152 speakers (53 healthy speakers, 99 PD patients) were examined. Only mildly strong correlation between speech features and clinical status of the speakers was observed. In the case of univariate classification analysis, sensitivity of 62.63% (imprecise articulation), 61.62% (dysprosody), 71.72% (speech dysfluency) and 59.60% (speech quality deterioration) was achieved. Multivariate classification analysis improved the classification performance. Sensitivity of 83.42% using only two features describing imprecise articulation and speech quality deterioration in HD was achieved. We showed the promising potential of the selected speech features and especially the use of poem recitation task to quantify and identify HD in PD.