EEG-Biofeedback and epilepsy: concept, methodology and tools for (neuro)therapy planning and objective evaluation

EEG-Biofeedback and Epilepsy: Concept, Methodology and Tools for (Neuro)therapy Planning and Objective Evaluation ABSTRACT Objective diagnosis and therapy evaluation are still challenging tasks for many neurological disorders. This is highly related to the diversity of cases and the variety of treatment modalities available. Especially in the case of epilepsy, which is a complex disorder not well-explained at the biochemical and physiological levels, there is the need for investigations for novel features, which can be extracted and quantified from electrophysiological signals in clinical practice. Neurotherapy is a complementary treatment applied in various disorders of the central nervous system, including epilepsy. The method is subsumed under behavioral medicine and is considered an operant conditioning in psychological terms. Although the application areas of this promising unconventional approach are rapidly increasing, the method is strongly debated, since the neurophysiological underpinnings of the process are not yet well understood. Therefore, verification of the efficacy of the treatment is one of the core issues in this field of research. Considering the diversity in epilepsy and its various treatment modalities, a concept and a methodology were developed in this work for increasing objectivity in diagnosis and therapy evaluation. The approach can also fulfill the requirement of patient-specific neurotherapy planning. Neuroprofile is introduced as a tool for defining a structured set of quantifiable measures which can be extracted from electrophysiological signals. A set of novel quantitative features (i.e., percentage epileptic pattern occurrence, contingent negative variation level difference measure, direct current recovery index, heart rate recovery ratio, and hyperventilation heart rate index) were defined, and the methods were introduced for extracting them. A software concept and the corresponding tools (i.e., the neuroprofile extraction module and a database) were developed as a basis for automation to support the methodology. The features introduced were investigated through real data, which were acquired both in laboratory studies with voluntary control subjects and in clinical applications with epilepsy patients. The results indicate the usefulness of the introduced measures and possible benefits of integrating the indices obtained from electroencephalogram (EEG) and electrocardiogram for diagnosis and therapy evaluation. The applicability of the methodology was demonstrated on sample cases for therapy evaluation. Based on the insights gained through the work, synergetics was proposed as a theoretical framework for comprehending neurotherapy as a complex process of learning. Furthermore, direct current (DC)-level in EEG was hypothesized to be an order parameter of the brain complex open system. For future research in this field, investigation of the interactions between higher cognitive functions and the autonomous nervous system was proposed. Keywords: EEG-biofeedback, epilepsy, neurotherapy, slow cortical potentials, objective diagnosis, therapy evaluation, epileptic pattern quantification, fractal dimension, contingent negative variation, hyperventilation, DC-shifts, instantaneous heart rate, neuroprofile, database system, synergetics.Die Epilepsie ist eine komplexe neurologische Erkrankung, die auf biochemischer und physiologischer Ebene nicht ausreichend geklärt ist. Die Vielfalt der epileptischen Krankheitsbilder und der Behandlungsmodalitäten verursacht ein Defizit an quantitativen Kenngrößen auf elektrophysiologischer Basis, die die Objektivität und die Effizienz der Diagnose und der Therapieevaluierung signifikant erhöhen können. Die Neurotherapie (bzw. EEG-Biofeedback) ist eine komplementäre Behandlung, die bei Erkrankungen, welche in Zusammenhang mit Regulationsproblemen des Zentralnervensystems stehen, angewandt wird. Obwohl sich die Applikationen dieser unkonventionellen Methode erweitern, wird sie nach wie vor stark diskutiert, da deren neuro- und psychophysiologischen Mechanismen wenig erforscht sind. Aus diesem Grund ist die Ermittlung von Kenngrößen als elektrophysiologische Korrelaten der ablaufenden Prozesse zur objektiven Einstellung und Therapievalidierung eines der Kernprobleme des Forschungsgebietes und auch der vorliegenden Arbeit. Unter Berücksichtigung der aktuellen neurologischen Erkenntnisse und der durch Untersuchungen an Probanden, sowie an Epilepsie-Patienten gewonnenen Ergebnisse, wurden ein Konzept und eine Methodologie entwickelt, um die Objektivität in der Diagnose und Therapieevaluierung zu erhöhen. Die Methodologie basiert auf einem Neuroprofil, welches als ein signalanalytisches mehrdimensionales Modell eingeführt wurde. Es beschreibt einen strukturierten Satz quantifizierbarer Kenngrößen, die aus dem Elektroenzephalogramm (EEG), den ereignisbezogenen Potentialen und dem Elektrokardiogramm extrahiert werden können. Als Komponenten des Neuroprofils wurden neuartige quantitative Kenngrößen (percentage epileptic pattern occurrence, contingent negative variation level difference measure, direct current recovery index, heart rate recovery ratio, hyperventilation heart rate index) definiert und die Methoden zu deren Berechnung algorithmisiert. Die Anwendbarkeit der Methodologie wurde beispielhaft für die Evaluierung von Neurotherapien an Epilepsie-Patienten demonstriert. Als Basis für eine zukünftige Automatisierung wurden ein Softwarekonzept und entsprechende Tools (neuroprofile extraction module und die Datenbank ?NeuroBase?) entwickelt. Der Ansatz erfüllt auch die Anforderungen der patientenspezifischen Therapieplanung und kann auf andere Krankheitsbilder übertragen werden. Durch die neu gewonnenen Erkenntnisse wurde die Synergetik als ein theoretischer Rahmen für die Analyse der Neurotherapie als komplexer Lernprozess vorgeschlagen. Es wurde die Hypothese aufgestellt, dass das Gleichspannungsniveau im EEG ein Ordnungsparameter des Gehirn ist, wobei das Gehirn als ein komplexes offenes System betrachtet wird. Für zukünftige Forschungen auf dem Gebiet wird empfohlen, die Wechselwirkungen zwischen den höheren kognitiven Funktionen und dem autonomen Nervensystem in diesem Kontext zu untersuchen

Heart rate variability analysis for the identification of the preictal interval in patients with drug-resistant epilepsy

Electrocardiogram (ECG) recordings, lasting hours before epileptic seizures, have been studied in the search for evidence of the existence of a preictal interval that follows a normal ECG trace and precedes the seizure's clinical manifestation. The preictal interval has not yet been clinically parametrized. Furthermore, the duration of this interval varies for seizures both among patients and from the same patient. In this study, we performed a heart rate variability (HRV) analysis to investigate the discriminative power of the features of HRV in the identification of the preictal interval. HRV information extracted from the linear time and frequency domains as well as from nonlinear dynamics were analysed. We inspected data from 238 temporal lobe seizures recorded from 41 patients with drug-resistant epilepsy from the EPILEPSIAE database. Unsupervised methods were applied to the HRV feature dataset, thus leading to a new perspective in preictal interval characterization. Distinguishable preictal behaviour was exhibited by 41% of the seizures and 90% of the patients. Half of the preictal intervals were identified in the 40 min before seizure onset. The results demonstrate the potential of applying clustering methods to HRV features to deepen the current understanding of the preictal state.FCT: CISUC -UID/CEC/00326/2020/ SFRH/BD/147862/2019info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

DEVELOPMENT OF AN ACCURATE SEIZURE DETECTION SYSTEM USING RANDOM FOREST CLASSIFIER WITH ICA BASED ARTIFACT REMOVAL ON EEG DATA

Abstract The creation of a reliable artifact removal and precise epileptic seizure identification system using Seina Scalp EEG data and cutting-edge machine learning techniques is presented in this paper. Random Forest classifier used for seizure classification, and independent component analysis (ICA) is used for artifact removal. Various artifacts, such as eye blinks, muscular activity, and environmental noise, are successfully recognized and removed from the EEG signals using ICA-based artifact removal, increasing the accuracy of the analysis that comes after. A precise distinction between seizure and non-seizure segments is made possible by the Random Forest Classifier, which was created expressly to capture the spatial and temporal patterns associated with epileptic seizures. Experimental evaluation of the Seina Scalp EEG Data demonstrates the excellent accuracy of our approach, achieving a 96% seizure identification rate A potential strategy for improving the accuracy and clinical utility of EEG-based epilepsy diagnosis is the merging of modern signal processing methods and deep learning algorithms

Analysis of EEG signals using complex brain networks

The human brain is so complex that two mega projects, the Human Brain Project and the BRAIN Initiative project, are under way in the hope of answering important questions for peoples' health and wellbeing. Complex networks become powerful tools for studying brain function due to the fact that network topologies on real-world systems share small world properties. Examples of these networks are the Internet, biological networks, social networks, climate networks and complex brain networks. Complex brain networks in real time biomedical signal processing applications are limited because some graph algorithms (such as graph isomorphism), cannot be solved in polynomial time. In addition, they are hard to use in single-channel EEG applications, such as clinic applications in sleep scoring and depth of anaesthesia monitoring. The first contribution of this research is to present two novel algorithms and two graph models. A fast weighted horizontal visibility algorithm (FWHVA) overcoming the speed limitations for constructing a graph from a time series is presented. Experimental results show that the FWHVA can be 3.8 times faster than the Fast Fourier Transfer (FFT) algorithm when input signals exceed 4000 data points. A linear time graph isomorphism algorithm (HVGI) can determine the isomorphism of two horizontal visibility graphs (HVGs) in a linear time domain. This is an efficient way to measure the synchronized index between two time series. Difference visibility graphs (DVGs) inherit the advantages of horizontal visibility graphs. They are noise-robust, and they overcome a pitfall of visibility graphs (VG): that the degree distribution (DD) doesn't satisfy a pure power-law. Jump visibility graphs (JVGs) enhance brain graphs allowing the processing of non-stationary biomedical signals. This research shows that the DD of JVGs always satisfies a power-lower if the input signals are purely non-stationary. The second highlight of this work is the study of three clinical biomedical signals: alcoholic, epileptic and sleep EEGs. Based on a synchronization likelihood and maximal weighted matching method, this work finds that the processing repeated stimuli and unrepeated stimuli in the controlled drinkers is larger than that in the alcoholics. Seizure detections based on epileptic EEGs have also been investigated with three graph features: graph entropy of VGs, mean strength of HVGs, and mean degrees of JVGs. All of these features can achieve 100% accuracy in seizure identification and differentiation from healthy EEG signals. Sleep EEGs are evaluated based on VG and DVG methods. It is shown that the complex brain networks exhibit more small world structure during deep sleep. Based on DVG methods, the accuracy peaks at 88:9% in a 5-state sleep stage classification from 14; 943 segments from single-channel EEGs. This study also introduces two weighted complex network approaches to analyse the nonlinear EEG signals. A weighted horizontal visibility graph (WHVG) is proposed to enhance noise-robustness properties. Tested with two Chaos signals and an epileptic EEG database, the research shows that the mean strength of the WHVG is more stable and noise-robust than those features from FFT and entropy. Maximal weighted matching algorithms have been applied to evaluate the difference in complex brain networks of alcoholics and controlled drinkers. The last contribution of this dissertation is to develop an unsupervised classifier for biomedical signal pattern recognition. A Multi-Scale Means (MSK-Means) algorithm is proposed for solving the subject-dependent biomedical signals classification issue. Using JVG features from the epileptic EEG database, the MSK-Means algorithm is 4:7% higher in identifying seizures than those by the K-means algorithm and achieves 92:3% accuracy for localizing the epileptogenic zone. The findings suggest that the outcome of this thesis can improve the performance of complex brain networks for biomedical signal processing and nonlinear time series analysis

Detection of Pathological HFO Using Supervised Machine Learning and iEEG Data

Epilepsy is the second most common neurological disorder and it affects approxi mately 50 million people worldwide. One of the main characteristics of this disorder is the presence of recurrent seizures which tend to be controlled through medication. Nonetheless, 20% of the patients with this disorder are resistant to drug treatment meaning that they need to go through alternative procedures

Neurological Disorders Detection Based on Computer Brain Interface Using Centralized Blockchain with Intrusion System

A brain-computer interface (BCI) would afford real-time communication, pointedly refining the standard of lifespan, brain-to-internet (B2I) connection, and interaction between the external digital devices and the brain. This assistive technology invents information and transmission advancement patterns, like directly linking the brain and multimedia gadgets to the cyber world. This system will convert brain data to signals which is understandable by multimedia gadgets without physical intervention and exchanges human-related languages with external atmosphere control protocols. These progressive difficulties would limit security severely. Hence, the rate of ransomware, attacks, malware, and other types of vulnerabilities will be rising radically. On the other hand, the necessity to enhance conventional processes for investigating cyberenvironment security facets. This article presents a Neurological Disorders Detection based on Computer Brain Interface Using Centralized Blockchain with Intrusion System (NDDCBI-CBIS). The projected NDDCBI-CBIS technique focuses on the identification of neurological disorders and epileptic seizure detection. To attain this, the presented NDDCBI-CBIS technique pre-processes the biomedical signals. Next, to detect epileptic seizures, long short-term memory (LSTM) model is applied. The experimental evaluation of the NDDCBI-CBIS approach can be tested by making use of the medical dataset and the outcomes inferred from the enhanced outcomes of the NDDCBI-CBIS technique

iEEG based Epileptic Seizure Detection using Reconstruction Independent Component Analysis and Long Short Term Memory Network

In recent decades, an epileptic seizure is a neurological disorder, which is commonly detected from intracranial Electroencephalogram (iEEG) signals. However, the visual interpretation and inspection of iEEG signal is subjective variability, a time-consuming mechanism, slow and vulnerable to errors. In this research article, an automated epileptic seizure detection model is proposed to highlight the above-mentioned concerns. The proposed automated model integrates the Reconstruction Independent Component Analysis (RICA) and Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) for seizure detection. In the proposed model, RICA is utilized to extract the features from the normalized iEEG signals, and then the obtained feature vectors are fed to the LSTM network for classification, which effectively classifies inter-ictal and ictal iEEG signals. This experimental outcome showed that the proposed RICA-LSTM model achieved an accuracy of 98.92%, sensitivity of 99.01%, specificity of 98.68%, balanced accuracy of 99.24%, and f-score of 98.25% in epileptic seizure recognition on the SWEC-ETHZ iEEG database, which is better compared to the conventional machine learning classifiers

Review of medical data analysis based on spiking neural networks

Medical data mainly includes various types of biomedical signals and medical images, which can be used by professional doctors to make judgments on patients' health conditions. However, the interpretation of medical data requires a lot of human cost and there may be misjudgments, so many scholars use neural networks and deep learning to classify and study medical data, which can improve the efficiency and accuracy of doctors and detect diseases early for early diagnosis, etc. Therefore, it has a wide range of application prospects. However, traditional neural networks have disadvantages such as high energy consumption and high latency (slow computation speed). This paper presents recent research on signal classification and disease diagnosis based on a third-generation neural network, the spiking neuron network, using medical data including EEG signals, ECG signals, EMG signals and MRI images. The advantages and disadvantages of pulsed neural networks compared with traditional networks are summarized and its development orientation in the future is prospected