Controlling Seizures with Technology: Researchers Are Working to Predict and Prevent Epileptic Seizures Before They Happen

Deep learning based smart health monitoring for automated prediction of epileptic seizures using spectral analysis of scalp EEG

Being one of the most prevalent neurological disorders, epilepsy affects the lives of patients through the infrequent occurrence of spontaneous seizures. These seizures can result in serious injuries or unexpected deaths in individuals due to accidents. So, there exists a crucial need for an automatic prediction of epileptic seizures to alert the patients well before the onset of seizures, enabling them to have a healthier quality of life. In this era, the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies are being used in a cloud-fog integrated environment to address such healthcare challenges using deep learning approaches. The present paper also proposes a smart health monitoring approach for automated prediction of epileptic seizures using deep learning-based spectral analysis of EEG signals. This approach processes EEG signals using filtering, segmentation into short duration segments and spectral-domain transformation. These signals are then analysed spectrally by separating them into several spectral bands, such as delta, theta, alpha, beta, and sub-bands of gamma. Furthermore, the mean spectral amplitude and spectral power features are retrieved from each spectral band to characterize various seizure states, which are fed to the proposed LSTM and CNN models. The results of the proposed CNN model show a maximum accuracy of 98.3% and 97.4% to obtain a binary classification of preictal and interictal seizure states for two different spectral band combinations respectively. Thus, the proposed CNN architecture accompanied by spectral analysis of EEG signals provides a viable method for reliable and real-time prediction of epileptic seizures.