Communications of the ACM
Can Paint Strokes Help Identify Alzheimer's?
Researchers examining paintings by seven famous artists who experienced either normal aging or neurodegenerative disorders found clear patterns of change in the fractal dimension of paintings created by artists who suffered neurological deterioration.
Credit: Maynooth University
Researchers at Maynooth University in Ireland and the University of Liverpool in the U.K. found it may be possible to use fractal analysis to detect neurodegenerative disorders in artists before they are diagnosed.
The researchers examined 2,092 paintings from the careers of seven famous artists who experienced both normal aging and neurodegenerative disorders. Of the seven artists, Salvador Dali and Norval Morrisseau suffered from Parkinson's disease, James Brooks and Willem De Kooning had Alzheimer's disease, and Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso, and Claude Monet had no recorded neurodegenerative disorders.
The Maynooth researchers analyzed the brush strokes of each of the paintings using non-traditional mathematics to assess fractals. "In much the same way that linguists have been able to determine the changes in the writings of authors and the speeches of politicians, fractal analysis can determine the changes that take place within the pattern of brush strokes of a painting," says Maynooth professor Ronan Reilly.
The study showed clear patterns of change in the fractal dimension of the paintings created by artists who suffered neurological deterioration compared to those artists who aged normally.
"We hope that our innovation may open up new research directions that will help to diagnose neurological disease in the early stages," says University of Liverpool lecturer Alex Forsythe.
From Maynooth University
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