Diagnosis of Epilepsy from Electroencephalography Signals Using Multilayer Perceptron and Elman Artificial Neural Networks and Wavelet Transform

Motor imagery EEG signal classification with a multivariate time series approach

BACKGROUND

Electroencephalogram (EEG) signals record electrical activity on the scalp. Measured signals, especially EEG motor imagery signals, are often inconsistent or distorted, which compromises their classification accuracy. Achieving a reliable classification of motor imagery EEG signals opens the door to possibilities such as the assessment of consciousness, brain computer interfaces or diagnostic tools. We seek a method that works with a reduced number of variables, in order to avoid overfitting and to improve interpretability. This work aims to enhance EEG signal classification accuracy by using methods based on time series analysis. Previous work on this line, usually took a univariate approach, thus losing the possibility to take advantage of the correlation information existing within the time series provided by the different electrodes. To overcome this problem, we propose a multivariate approach that can fully capture the relationships among the different time series included in the EEG data. To perform the multivariate time series analysis, we use a multi-resolution analysis approach based on the discrete wavelet transform, together with a stepwise discriminant that selects the most discriminant variables provided by the discrete wavelet transform analysis RESULTS: Applying this methodology to EEG data to differentiate between the motor imagery tasks of moving either hands or feet has yielded very good classification results, achieving in some cases up to 100% of accuracy for this 2-class pre-processed dataset. Besides, the fact that these results were achieved using a reduced number of variables (55 out of 22,176) can shed light on the relevance and impact of those variables.

CONCLUSIONS

This work has a potentially large impact, as it enables classification of EEG data based on multivariate time series analysis in an interpretable way with high accuracy. The method allows a model with a reduced number of features, facilitating its interpretability and improving overfitting. Future work will extend the application of this classification method to help in diagnosis procedures for detecting brain pathologies and for its use in brain computer interfaces. In addition, the results presented here suggest that this method could be applied to other fields for the successful analysis of multivariate temporal data.

PredAmyl-MLP: Prediction of Amyloid Proteins Using Multilayer Perceptron

Amyloid is generally an aggregate of insoluble fibrin; its abnormal deposition is the pathogenic mechanism of various diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease and type II diabetes. Therefore, accurately identifying amyloid is necessary to understand its role in pathology. We proposed a machine learning-based prediction model called PredAmyl-MLP, which consists of the following three steps: feature extraction, feature selection, and classification. In the step of feature extraction, seven feature extraction algorithms and different combinations of them are investigated, and the combination of SVMProt-188D and tripeptide composition (TPC) is selected according to the experimental results. In the step of feature selection, maximum relevant maximum distance (MRMD) and binomial distribution (BD) are, respectively, used to remove the redundant or noise features, and the appropriate features are selected according to the experimental results. In the step of classification, we employed multilayer perceptron (MLP) to train the prediction model. The 10-fold cross-validation results show that the overall accuracy of PredAmyl-MLP reached 91.59%, and the performance was better than the existing methods.

Multimodal data and machine learning for surgery outcome prediction in complicated cases of mesial temporal lobe epilepsy

BACKGROUND

This study sought to predict postsurgical seizure freedom from pre-operative diagnostic test results and clinical information using a rapid automated approach, based on supervised learning methods in patients with drug-resistant focal seizures suspected to begin in temporal lobe.

METHOD

We applied machine learning, specifically a combination of mutual information-based feature selection and supervised learning classifiers on multimodal data, to predict surgery outcome retrospectively in 20 presurgical patients (13 female; mean age±SD, in years 33±9.7 for females, and 35.3±9.4 for males) who were diagnosed with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE) and subsequently underwent standard anteromesial temporal lobectomy. The main advantage of the present work over previous studies is the inclusion of the extent of ipsilateral neocortical gray matter atrophy and spatiotemporal properties of depth electrode-recorded seizures as training features for individual patient surgery planning.

RESULTS

A maximum relevance minimum redundancy (mRMR) feature selector identified the following features as the most informative predictors of postsurgical seizure freedom in this study's sample of patients: family history of epilepsy, ictal EEG onset pattern (positive correlation with seizure freedom), MRI-based gray matter thickness reduction in the hemisphere ipsilateral to seizure onset, proportion of seizures that first appeared in ipsilateral amygdala to total seizures, age, epilepsy duration, delay in the spread of ipsilateral ictal discharges from site of onset, gender, and number of electrode contacts at seizure onset (negative correlation with seizure freedom). Using these features in combination with a least square support vector machine (LS-SVM) classifier compared to other commonly used classifiers resulted in very high surgical outcome prediction accuracy (95%).

CONCLUSIONS

Supervised machine learning using multimodal compared to unimodal data accurately predicted postsurgical outcome in patients with atypical MTLE.

Automated diagnosis of epilepsy using EEG power spectrum

Interictal electroencephalography (EEG) has clinically meaningful limitations in its sensitivity and specificity in the diagnosis of epilepsy because of its dependence on the occurrence of epileptiform discharges. We have developed a computer-aided diagnostic (CAD) tool that operates on the absolute spectral energy of the routine EEG and has both substantially higher sensitivity and negative predictive value than the identification of interictal epileptiform discharges. Our approach used a multilayer perceptron to classify 156 patients admitted for video-EEG monitoring. The patient population was diagnostically diverse; 87 were diagnosed with either generalized or focal seizures. The remainder of the patients were diagnosed with nonepileptic seizures. The sensitivity was 92% (95% confidence interval [CI] 85-97%) and the negative predictive value was 82% (95% CI 67-92%). We discuss how these findings suggest that this CAD can be used to supplement event-based analysis by trained epileptologists.