On the alzheimer’s disease diagnosis: Automatic spontaneous speech analysis

Abstract

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most prevalent form of progressive degenerative dementia and it has a high socio-economic impact in Western countries therefore is one of the most active research areas today. Its diagnosis is sometimes made by excluding other dementias and definitive confirmation must be done through a post-mortem study of the brain tissue of the patient. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the improvement of early diagnosis of AD and its degree of severity from an automatic analysis performed by non-invasive intelligent methods. The methods selected in this case are Automatic Spontaneous Speech Analysis (ASSA) and Emotional Temperature (ET) that have the great advantage of being non invasive low cost and without any side effects. The developed system obtains hopeful results for early diagnosis.