An Efficient Method for Selecting the Optimal Features using Evolutionary Algorithms for Epilepsy Diagnosis

Abstract

One of the important parameters in the brain–computer interface (BCI) system is speed. Therefore, it is always desirable to design a high-speed system that has an acceptable performance, simultaneously. The main idea of this paper is the use of evolutionary algorithms (EAs) to select the optimal features for epilepsy diagnosis by processing the electroencephalogram (EEG) signals. The lesser the number of features is, the higher will be the usefulness of accuracy of the system to us. Therefore, here, using EAs, some of the features that are redundant in the data and do not contain a lot of information and only increase the complexity of the system are eliminated and the best features are chosen. We select this choice by EAs. Running the feature selection step is after the feature extraction step. In fact, the features were extracted using the common spatial pattern (CSP) algorithm, and then the optimal features were selected from the extracted feature set. This can save a lot of system complexity and reduce system execution time considerably. Finally, at the diagnostic stage, these selected features are given to a simple neural network (NN). The results showed that when the combination of EA and CSP is used, the precision of the system is much higher than when the CSP method is only used, although it contributes significantly to the complexity of the system.