Quantifying Mild Cognitive Impairments in Older Adults Using Multi-modal Wearable Sensor Data in a Kitchen Environment

Behavioral sensing using wearables has emerged as a valuable tool for screening of neurodegenerative conditions, including Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). Existing research has predominantly focused on using wearables for quantifying walking patterns in individuals with MCI, typically within controlled environments. On the other hand, the human activity recognition community has been actively studying to quantify kitchen activities, which is an instrumental activity of daily living. Previous studies reported deficits in visuospatial navigation in individuals living with MCI, which affects functional independence within the kitchen environment for these populations. This study investigates the use of wrist and eye-tracking wearable sensors to quantify kitchen activities in individuals with MCI. We collected multimodal datasets from 19 older adults (11 with MCI and 8 with normal cognition) while preparing a yogurt bowl. Our multimodal analysis model could classify older adults with MCI from normal cognition with a 74% F1 score. The feature importance analysis showed the association of weaker upper limb motor function and delayed eye movements with cognitive decline, consistent with previous findings in MCI research. This pilot study demonstrates the feasibility of monitoring behavior markers of MCI in daily living settings, which calls for further studies with larger-scale validation in individuals’ home environments.