Neural networks with periodogram and autoregressive spectral analysis methods in detection of epileptic seizure

Abstract

Approximately 1% of the people in the world suffer from epilepsy. Careful analyses of the electroencephalograph (EEG) records can provide valuable insight and improved understanding of the mechanisms causing epileptic disorders. Predicting the onset of epileptic seizure is an important and difficult biomedical problem, which has attracted substantial attention of the intelligent computing community over the past two decades. The purpose of this work was to investigate the performance of the periodogram and autoregressive (AR) power spectrum methods to extract classifiable features from human electroencephalogram (EEG) by using artificial neural networks (ANN). The feedforward ANN system was trained and tested with the backpropagation algorithm using a large data set of exemplars. We present a method for the automatic comparison of epileptic seizures in EEG, allowing the grouping of seizures having similar overall patterns. Each channel of the EEG is first broken down into segments having relatively stationary characteristics. Features are then calculated for each segment, and all segments of all channels of the seizures of a patient are grouped into clusters of similar morphology. This clustering allows labeling of every EEG segment. Examples from 5 patients with scalp electrodes illustrate the ability of the method to group seizures of similar morphology. It was observed that ANN classification of EEG signals with AR preprocessing gives better results, and these results can also be used for the deduction of epileptic seizure.