Researchers Use AI to Detect Early Alzheimer's Signs Through Patient's Voice

Boston University researchers have developed an AI system capable of detecting early signs of Alzheimer's Disease in a patient’s voice.

There's currently no cure for the disease, however, catching it early improves a patient’s treatment options.

Using a combination of natural language processing and machine learning, the researchers developed a tool that can automatically predict the progression of Alzheimer's in a patient.

Patient’s voice recordings are fed into the AI, which can then extrapolate whether they will develop Alzheimer’s within six years.

In the study, the AI system was able to detect Alzheimer’s with an accuracy of 78.5% from some 166 patients.

Publishing results of the study in the Alzheimer's Association Journal, the researchers said the AI “offers a fully automated procedure, providing an opportunity to develop an inexpensive, broadly accessible and easy-to-administer screening tool for mild cognitive impairments (MCIs) to Alzheimer's progression prediction.”

They add that the tool could even be used to perform remote assessments, letting patients provide doctors with voice recordings to obtain a diagnosis.

Almost 7 million Americans are currently living with Alzheimer's, with that number projected to rise to nearly 13 million by 2050.

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While there’s currently no cure, catching signs of the disease early gives patients more opportunities for treatments, including taking part in clinical trials to find a potential cure.

The researchers sought to examine voice recordings from neuropsychological exams, combined with basic demographic information, to find out if AI could be used to provide earlier diagnoses.

The recordings were analyzed using speech recognition that turned the audio input into text which was then processed using language models.

The multimodal approach created what the researchers described as a “fully automated assessment” capable of identifying patients most at risk.

The model showed that older women with lower education levels are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s, as well as women with the APOE-ε4 gene.

The AI also found that the likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s increases “significantly” with age. Some 19% of patients aged 75 to 84 were found likely to develop the disease, which rises to 35% for those older than 85.

“Our study demonstrates the potential of using automatic speech recognition and natural language processing techniques to develop a prediction tool for identifying individuals with MCIs who are at risk of developing Alzheimer’s,” the researchers wrote.

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This article first appeared in IoT World Today's sister publication AI Business.