Classification of alcoholic EEG signals using wavelet scattering transform-based features

Abstract

Following the research question and the relevant dataset, feature extraction is the most important component of machine learning and data science pipelines. The wavelet scattering transform (WST) is a recently developed knowledge-based feature extraction technique and is structurally like a convolutional neural network (CNN). It preserves information in high-frequency, is insensitive to signal deformations, and generates low variance features of real-valued signals generally required in classification tasks. With data from a publicly-available UCI database, we investigated the ability of WST-based features extracted from multichannel electroencephalogram (EEG) signals to discriminate 1.0-s EEG records of 20 male subjects with alcoholism and 20 male healthy subjects. Using record-wise 10-fold cross-validation, we found that WST-based features, inputted to a support vector machine (SVM) classifier, were able to correctly classify all alcoholic and normal EEG records. Similar performances were achieved with 1D CNN. In contrast, the highest independent-subject-wise mean 10-fold cross-validation performance was achieved with WST-based features fed to a linear discriminant (LDA) classifier. The results achieved with two 10-fold cross-validation approaches suggest that the WST together with a conventional classifier is an alternative to CNN for classification of alcoholic and normal EEGs. WST-based features from occipital and parietal regions were the most informative at discriminating between alcoholic and normal EEG records.