Investigating the effect of acupuncture treatment on MCI patients using classification techniques

Mild cognitive impairment is a deterioration in cognition characterized by memory, judgment, and language deficits (MCI). Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is quite likely to occur as a result of such an impairment. As a result, early detection of MCI or an early stage of AD is crucial for examination and therapy. In this study, during a working memory test, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) was utilized to evaluate variations in the concentration of oxygenated hemoglobin (HbO) in the pre-frontal cortex of six healthy controls (HC) and six MCI patients. We looked at the effects of intervention (acupuncture treatment) on MCI patients (i.e., MCI-0: before intervention, MCI-1: after intervention). After a 45-day break, during which the acupuncture therapy was given, both groups went through the fNIRS data acquisition. The analysis indicates that MCI-0’s mean HbO response was substantially lower (p < 0.05) than HC’s, but similar (p > 0.05) to MCI-1’s. Signal mean and peak levels of HC were substantially different (p = 0.0409, p = 0.0430) from MCI-1, however there was no significant difference (p = 0.4885, p = 0.4437) between MCI-1 and MCI-0. For the purpose of classification, linear discriminant analysis and support vector machine were used. Using both of the classifiers, the results indicated a substantial increase in the cognitive ability of MCI patients. This was reflected as a decrease in the classification accuracies after the acupuncture therapy sessions. Furthermore, the findings of the fNIRS were shown to be favorably linked with the outcomes of cognitive tests. These findings demonstrated that by utilizing the classification method and optimal temporal characteristics, fNIRS may be utilized to discriminate MCI patients from healthy controls.