Keystroke Biometrics as a Tool for the Early Diagnosis and Clinical Assessment of Parkinson's Disease

(1) Background: Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disease. Early diagnosis and reliable clinical assessments are essential for appropriate therapy and improving patients' quality of life. Keystroke biometrics, which capture unique typing behavior, have shown potential for early PD diagnosis. This study aimed to evaluate keystroke biometric parameters from two datasets to identify indicators that can effectively distinguish de novo PD patients from healthy controls. (2) Methods: Data from natural typing tasks in Physionet were analyzed to estimate keystroke biometric parameters. The parameters investigated included alternating-finger tapping (afTap) and standard deviations of interkey latencies (IL_SD) and release latencies (RL_SD). Sensitivity rates were calculated to assess the discriminatory ability of these parameters. (3) Results: Significant differences were observed in three parameters, namely afTap, IL_SD, and RL_SD, between de novo PD patients and healthy controls. The sensitivity rates were high, with values of 83%, 88%, and 96% for afTap, IL_SD, and RL_SD, respectively. Correlation analysis revealed a significantly negative correlation between typing speed and number of words typed with the standard motor assessment for PD, UPDRS-III, in patients with early PD. (4) Conclusions: Simple algorithms utilizing keystroke biometric parameters can serve as effective screening tests in distinguishing de novo PD patients from healthy controls. Moreover, typing speed and number of words typed were identified as reliable tools for assessing clinical statuses in PD patients. These findings underscore the potential of keystroke biometrics for early PD diagnosis and clinical severity assessment.