ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Aging

Sec. Healthy Longevity

Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fragi.2025.1532550

This article is part of the Research TopicMachine Learning-Driven Insights into Cognitive Aging and Behavioral ChangesView all 3 articles

Possibility of Screening for Mild Cognitive Impairment via an Eye Tracking-Based Cognitive Scale

Provisionally accepted
Naoki  KodamaNaoki Kodama1*Sou  TakahashiSou Takahashi1Masazumi  TsujiMasazumi Tsuji2Yuji  KawaseYuji Kawase3Satoshi  NaruseSatoshi Naruse4Katsuya  UrakamiKatsuya Urakami5
  • 1Niigata University of Health and Welfare, Niigata, Japan
  • 2Tsuji Internal Medicine, Cardiology, and Dentistry Clinic, Tokyo, Japan
  • 3Kawase Neurology Clinic, Sanjo, Japan
  • 4Midori Hospital, NIIGATA, Japan
  • 5Tottori University, Tottori, Tottori, Japan

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

The Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) is widely used as a screening test for mild cognitive impairment (MCI). However, the MoCA takes approximately 15 minutes to administer and evaluate by skilled examiners, such as medical professionals. This study assessed whether an eye tracking-based cognitive scale using virtual reality (VR) was accurate and efficient to screen for MCI. Methods: This study included 143 patients. The Virtual Reality-Based Cognitive Function Examination (VR-E) was used with all participants to evaluate their memory, judgment, spatial cognition, calculation, and language function. Results: Significant differences were observed in all cognitive domains of memory, judgment, spatial cognition, calculation, and language function between the Alzheimer's disease (AD), MCI, and older healthy control (HC) groups. The area under the curve value of the VR-E score for the HC and MCI groups was 0.857, and that for the AD and MCI groups was 0.870. The correlation coefficient between the MMSE and VR-E scores was 0.566 (p<0.001), and that between the Japanese version of the MoCA (MoCA-J) and VR-E scores was 0.648 (p<0.001), which indicated a moderate correlation in both comparisons.The VR-E had the same diagnostic performance results as the MoCA-J, thus the VR-E has potential for use in screening patients for MCI.

Keywords: Mild Cognitive Impairment, screening, eye tracking-based cognitive scale, Alzheimer's disease, virtual reality

Received: 22 Nov 2024; Accepted: 05 Jun 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Kodama, Takahashi, Tsuji, Kawase, Naruse and Urakami. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Naoki Kodama, Niigata University of Health and Welfare, Niigata, Japan

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