Accurate Classification of Seizure and Seizure-Free Intervals of Intracranial EEG Signals From Epileptic Patients

Abstract

Electroencephalogram (EEG) signals are widely used to detect epileptic seizures in a patient’s neuronal activity. Since visual inspection and interpretation of EEG signal are time-consuming and prone to errors, various computer-aided diagnostic (CAD) tools have been proposed. In this paper, we present a novel automated detection system to distinguish between intracranial EEG time courses with seizures and those that are seizure-free based on complexity measures. Specifically, the features used to characterize the EEG signals are estimates of multiscaling properties over a large spectrum measured by using the generalized Hurst exponent. We tested the capacity of these estimates to correctly classify seizure intervals using a publicly available data set. Using the k-nearest neighbor classifier and testing with tenfold cross validation, we achieved 100% accurate classification. Our proposed CAD system outperformed the existing state-of-the-art models. Moreover, our CAD system is not only accurate but also fast and simple to implement. Therefore, it can be used as an expert system to support a decision in clinical applications.