Nothing is more revealing than body movement: Measuring the movement kinematics in VR to screen dementia

The inability to complete instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) is the early signs of dementia. Questionnaire-based assessments of IADL are easy to use but prone to subjective bias. Here, we describe a novel virtual reality (VR) test to assess two complex IADL tasks: handling financial transactions and using public transportation. While a subject performs the tasks in a VR setting, a motion capture system traces the position and orientation of the dominant hand and head in a three-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system. Kinematic raw data are collected and converted into kinematic performance measures, i.e., motion trajectory, moving distance, speed. Inclusion of these kinematic measures significantly improved the classification of patients with early dementia.