A Mahalanobis Distance Based Approach towards the Reliable Detection of Geriatric Depression Symptoms Co-existing with Cognitive Decline

Geriatric depression is a highly frequent medical condition that influences independent living and social life of senior citizens. It also affects their medical condition due to reduced commitment to the appropriate treatment. Coexistence of depressive symptoms in Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and lack of objective tools towards their reliable distinction from neurodegeneration, motivated this study to propose a computerized approach of depression recognition. Resting state electroencephalographic data of both rhythmic activity and synchronization features were extracted and the Mahalanobis Distance (MD) classifier was adopted in order to differentiate 33 depressive patients from an equal number of age-matched controls. Both groups demonstrated cognitive decline within the context of MCI. The promising results (89.39% overall classification accuracy, 93.94% sensitivity and 84.85% specificity) imply that combination of neurophysiological (EEG) and neuropsychological tools with pattern recognition techniques may provide an integrative diagnosis of geriatric depression with high accuracy.