Associations Between the Digital Clock Drawing Test and Brain Volume: Large Community-Based Prospective Cohort (Framingham Heart Study)

Background: The digital Clock Drawing Test (dCDT) has been recently used as a more objective tool to assess cognition. However, the association between digitally obtained clock drawing features and structural neuroimaging measures has not been assessed in large population-based studies.

Objective: We aimed to investigate the association between dCDT features and brain volume.

Methods: This study included participants from the Framingham Heart Study who had both a dCDT and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan, and were free of dementia or stroke. Linear regression models were used to assess the association between 18 dCDT composite scores (derived from 105 dCDT raw features) and brain MRI measures, including total cerebral brain volume (TCBV), cerebral white matter volume, cerebral gray matter volume, hippocampal volume, and white matter hyperintensity (WMH) volume. Classification models were also built from clinical risk factors, dCDT composite scores, and MRI measures to distinguish people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) from those whose cognition was intact.

Results: A total of 1656 participants were included in this study (mean age 61 years, SD 13 years; 50.9% women), with 23 participants diagnosed with MCI. All dCDT composite scores were associated with TCBV after adjusting for multiple testing (P value <.05/18). Eleven dCDT composite scores were associated with cerebral white matter volume, but only 1 dCDT composite score was associated with cerebral gray matter volume. None of the dCDT composite scores was associated with hippocampal volume or WMH volume. The classification model for differentiating MCI and normal cognition participants, which incorporated age, sex, education, MRI measures, and dCDT composite scores, showed an area under the curve of 0.897.

Conclusions: dCDT composite scores were significantly associated with multiple brain MRI measures in a large community-based cohort. The dCDT has the potential to be used as a cognitive assessment tool in the clinical diagnosis of MCI.