Path Signature Representation of Patient-Clinician Interactions as a Predictor for Neuropsychological Tests Outcomes in Children: A Proof of Concept
This proof-of-concept could enhance efficiency in cognitive assessments for children with neurodevelopmental disorders, but it is incremental due to the small sample size and preliminary nature.
The study tackled predicting cognitive test outcomes in children with neurodevelopmental disorders by analyzing video and speech data from patient-clinician interactions, using path signatures as features, and found promising potential for predicting all cognitive test scores.
This research report presents a proof-of-concept study on the application of machine learning techniques to video and speech data collected during diagnostic cognitive assessments of children with a neurodevelopmental disorder. The study utilised a dataset of 39 video recordings, capturing extensive sessions where clinicians administered, among other things, four cognitive assessment tests. From the first 40 minutes of each clinical session, covering the administration of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-V), we extracted head positions and speech turns of both clinician and child. Despite the limited sample size and heterogeneous recording styles, the analysis successfully extracted path signatures as features from the recorded data, focusing on patient-clinician interactions. Importantly, these features quantify the interpersonal dynamics of the assessment process (dialogue and movement patterns). Results suggest that these features exhibit promising potential for predicting all cognitive tests scores of the entire session length and for prototyping a predictive model as a clinical decision support tool. Overall, this proof of concept demonstrates the feasibility of leveraging machine learning techniques for clinical video and speech data analysis in order to potentially enhance the efficiency of cognitive assessments for neurodevelopmental disorders in children.