Study on the Feasibility of Using a Chinese Character Writing Scale to Distinguish Amnestic-MCI

The purpose of this paper was to utilize the Chinese Character Writing Scale (CCWS) to identify patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (a-MCI) from healthy and Alzheimer´s disease (AD) patients. Thirty-five cases were collected, including 11 patients with AD (AD group), 11 patients with a-MCI (a-MCI group), and 13 normal controls (NC group). The scores of the CCWS for different groups were evaluated by the physicians, then used to distinguish a-MCI from NC and AD. The ability of the CCWS to distinguish a-MCI was compared with other scales used clinically, such as the methods of the Alzheimer´s Disease Assessment Scale (ADAS) and the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE). The results was as follows: (1) the classification accuracy based on the CCWS on distinguishing a-MCI from NC is greater than the MMSE and ADAS, (2) age and level of education had little effect on the classification accuracy of either scale on distinguishing a-MCI from NC. These experimental results indicate that using the CCWS to distinguish a-MCI is feasible.