Graph Learning and Deep Neural Network Ensemble for Supporting Cognitive Decline Assessment

Abstract

Cognitive decline represents a significant public health concern due to its severe implications on memory and general health. Early detection is crucial to initiate timely interventions and improve patient outcomes. However, traditional diagnosis methods often rely on personal interpretations or biases, may not detect the early stages of cognitive decline, or involve invasive screening procedures; thus, there is a growing interest in developing non-invasive methods benefiting also from the technological advances. Wearable devices and Internet of Things sensors can monitor various aspects of daily life together with health parameters and can provide valuable data regarding people’s behavior. In this paper, we propose a technical solution that can be useful for potentially supporting cognitive decline assessment in early stages, by employing advanced machine learning techniques for detecting higher activity fragmentation based on daily activity monitoring using wearable devices. Our approach also considers data coming from wellbeing assessment questionnaires that can offer other important insights about a monitored person. We use deep neural network models to capture complex, non-linear relationships in the daily activities data and graph learning for the structural wellbeing information in the questionnaire answers. The proposed solution is evaluated in a simulated environment on a large synthetic dataset, the results showing that our approach can offer an alternative as a support for early detection of cognitive decline during patient-assessment processes.