Could a Digital Pen Change How We Diagnose Brain Function?

An anonymous reader writes: By using custom tracking software to monitor the output from a digital pen, MIT researchers say they have found a way to better predict the onset of brain conditions like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. according to MIT: "For several decades, doctors have screened for conditions including Parkinson's and Alzheimer's with the CDT, which asks subjects to draw an analog clock-face showing a specified time, and to copy a pre-drawn clock. But the test has limitations, because its benchmarks rely on doctors' subjective judgments, such as determining whether a clock circle has 'only minor distortion.' CSAIL researchers were particularly struck by the fact that CDT analysis was typically based on the person's final drawing rather than on the process as a whole. Enter the Anoto Live Pen, a digitizing ballpoint pen that measures its position on the paper upwards of 80 times a second, using a camera built into the pen. The pen provides data that are far more precise than can be measured on an ordinary drawing, and captures timing information that allows the system to analyze each and every one of a subject's movements and hesitations."

Comments

What is a pen?

[Blaskowicz]

Isn't that technology for terrorists and luddites? Writing on non-monitor surfaces ought to be banned. We need to send everything to Microsoft ; arguably we can put in a system with that high tech pen which denies inking before proprer Internet connection and authentication are established, and then the camera can film what's written. So that's good, but the pen may leave a series of words that can then be read unsupervised. So I'm on the fence whether this should be allowed or not, probably some form of paper management should exist and/or just put those that can access the paper under "closer surveillance".