阿尔茨海默病者的早期眼球跟踪运动缺失

The aim of this study is to evaluate pursuit ocular movements (POM) provided by a vision-based non-intrusive eye tracker in patients with early Alzheimer disease (AD). Oculomotor performance has not been extensively studied in AD. Studies to date have been consistent in reporting poor performance in AD patients. In fact, previous studies suggest that patients affected by AD have clear alterations of smooth-pursuit ocular movements induced by a predictable target. Values of POM were lower in AD patients than in NC (p<0.001). In AD patients, values didn’t correlated closely with MMSE scores (p=0.3). No significant differences were found in AD patients treated with different medications. We used a vision-based method, under pending patent, for non-intrusive eye tracking, previously described, which can be proposed as a possible tool for supporting the diagnosis of early AD, in association with clinical evaluation, as an add-on to the neuropsychological scores.