Spatial neglect is a common impairment seen after right-hemisphere injury. This syndrome is often assessed with cancellation tasks, which can also guide prognosis. This web-based test provides similar functionality to the desktop Cancel application.
- Open the web page https://rordenlab.github.io/CancelForWeb/ and select the desired test (e.g. bells or letters) from the first pulldown-menu. At this stage, you can demonstrate the task, illustrating the targets. Next, choose the
Mode: testfrom the pull down menu. At this stage, the task is to click on all the targets on the screen. Once all targets have been found, press the hamburger icon (☰) to return to theMode: describe. You will be asked to save the test. Note that the status bar at the bottom will provide a few measures, including theCoC(Center of Cancellation). - The data files generated log not only which targets have been found, but also the order and timing of the search, which can provide useful parameters for understanding neglect.
- Note that you can also use these web pages to transcribe paper-and-pencil tests, but the order and timing information will not be meaningful.
You can score existing tests by simply dragging and dropping .ini result files onto the web page. Key descriptive statistics—such as the number of targets found and the Center of Cancellation (CoC)—will appear in the status bar at the bottom of the page.
For batch processing of multiple test results, use the accompanying Python script cancel.py. This script extracts scoring metrics and saves them in a tab-separated values (.tsv) file. It supports single files, multiple files, or entire folders:
python cancel.py bells_1.ini
python cancel.py bells_1.ini bells_2.ini
python cancel.py /path/to/folder/
It is easy to modify this web page by working with a hot-reloadable web page. Since this software uses a permissive license, you can easily fork this project and make your own variations using the free Github pages functionality.
git clone https://github.com/rordenlab/CancelForWeb
cd CancelForWeb
npm install
npm run dev
The file format used is the archaic Windows text .INI format used for legacy initialization files. If this software was created from scratch, it would have been easier to use JSON files. However, these files are compatible with the (desktop version)[https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20433859/], which does provide nice tools for creating new tests.
- Binder et al. (1992) described the CoC measure.
- Rorden et al. (2010) provide desktop tools for assessing neglect.
- Dalmaijer et al. (2015 ) provide open source Python tools for cancellation measures.
- Röhrig et al. (2025) describe how the center of cancellation can be used to predict outcome, aided by a web page.
- Rosenzopf et al. 2022 note that CoC is relatively robust for format and size, which is useful for a web-based test.