University of Southern California researchers say they have developed a new eye test that can easily, accurately and more cheaply diagnose such neurological conditions as Parkinson’s Disease, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and fetal alcohol syndrome.
The test, detailed in the Journal of Neurology, is based on the knowledge that each of the conditions involves control of the eyes and attention dysfunctions, so they can be easily identified through an evaluation of how patients move their eyes while they watch television.
"Natural attention and eye movement behavior – like a drop of saliva – contains a biometric signature of an individual and her/his state of brain function or dysfunction," the researchers said. "Such individual signatures, and especially potential biomarkers of particular neurological disorders which they may contain, however, have not yet been successfully decoded."
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Such conditions are typically diagnosed through clinical evaluation, structured behavioral tasks and neuroimaging – costly labor-intensive methods that are subjective and limited, the researchers said.
To evaluate whether the eye test might provide a better diagnostic tool, researchers at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, along with collaborators at Queen's University in Canada, tried out the new screening method on more than 108 patients with the three conditions.
Participants in the study were instructed to "watch and enjoy" television clips for 20 minutes while their eye movements were recorded and analyzed, using a computer model of visual attention that evaluated 224 features.
The results showed eye movements allowed the team to identify older adults with Parkinson's Disease with 89.6 percent accuracy, and children with either ADHD or FASD with 77.3 percent accuracy.
Researchers said the new method provides considerable promise as an “easily-deployed, low-cost, high-throughput screening tool,” especially for young children and elderly people who may be less compliant to traditional tests.
"For the first time, we can actually decode a person's neurological state from their everyday behavior, without having to subject them to difficult or time-consuming tests," said researcher Laurent Itti.
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