Convolutional Neural Networks for Epileptic Seizure Prediction

Epilepsy is the most common neurological disorder and an accurate forecast of seizures would help to overcome the patient's uncertainty and helplessness. In this contribution, we present and discuss a novel methodology for the classification of intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG) for seizure prediction. Contrary to previous approaches, we categorically refrain from an extraction of hand-crafted features and use a convolutional neural network (CNN) topology instead for both the determination of suitable signal characteristics and the binary classification of preictal and interictal segments. Three different models have been evaluated on public datasets with long-term recordings from four dogs and three patients. Overall, our findings demonstrate the general applicability. In this work we discuss the strengths and limitations of our methodology.Comment: accepted for MLESP 201

Integrated Machine Learning Approaches to Improve Classification performance and Feature Extraction Process for EEG Dataset

Epileptic seizure or epilepsy is a chronic neurological disorder that occurs due to brain neurons\u27 abnormal activities and has affected approximately 50 million people worldwide. Epilepsy can affect patients’ health and lead to life-threatening emergencies. Early detection of epilepsy is highly effective in avoiding seizures by intervening in treatment. The electroencephalogram (EEG) signal, which contains valuable information of electrical activity in the brain, is a standard neuroimaging tool used by clinicians to monitor and diagnose epilepsy. Visually inspecting the EEG signal is an expensive, tedious, and error-prone practice. Moreover, the result varies with different neurophysiologists for an identical reading. Thus, automatically classifying epilepsy into different epileptic states with a high accuracy rate is an urgent requirement and has long been investigated. This PhD thesis contributes to the epileptic seizure detection problem using Machine Learning (ML) techniques. Machine learning algorithms have been implemented to automatically classifying epilepsy from EEG data. Imbalance class distribution problems and effective feature extraction from the EEG signals are the two major concerns towards effectively and efficiently applying machine learning algorithms for epilepsy classification. The algorithms exhibit biased results towards the majority class when classes are imbalanced, while effective feature extraction can improve classification performance. In this thesis, we presented three different novel frameworks to effectively classify epileptic states while addressing the above issues. Firstly, a deep neural network-based framework exploring different sampling techniques was proposed where both traditional and state-of-the-art sampling techniques were experimented with and evaluated for their capability of improving the imbalance ratio and classification performance. Secondly, a novel integrated machine learning-based framework was proposed to effectively learn from EEG imbalanced data leveraging the Principal Component Analysis method to extract high- and low-variant principal components, which are empirically customized for the imbalanced data classification. This study showed that principal components associated with low variances can capture implicit patterns of the minority class of a dataset. Next, we proposed a novel framework to effectively classify epilepsy leveraging summary statistics analysis of window-based features of EEG signals. The framework first denoised the signals using power spectrum density analysis and replaced outliers with k-NN imputer. Next, window level features were extracted from statistical, temporal, and spectral domains. Basic summary statistics are then computed from the extracted features to feed into different machine learning classifiers. An optimal set of features are selected leveraging variance thresholding and dropping correlated features before feeding the features for classification. Finally, we applied traditional machine learning classifiers such as Support Vector Machine, Decision Tree, Random Forest, and k-Nearest Neighbors along with Deep Neural Networks to classify epilepsy. We experimented the frameworks with a benchmark dataset through rigorous experimental settings and displayed the effectiveness of the proposed frameworks in terms of accuracy, precision, recall, and F-beta score

Exploring machine learning techniques in epileptic seizure detection and prediction

Epilepsy is the most common neurological disorder, affecting between 0.6% and 0.8% of the global population. Among those affected by epilepsy whose primary method of seizure management is Anti Epileptic Drug therapy (AED), 30% go on to develop resistance to drugs which ultimately leads to poor seizure management. Currently, alternative therapeutic methods with successful outcome and wide applicability to various types of epilepsy are limited. During an epileptic seizure, the onset of which tends to be sudden and without prior warning, sufferers are highly vulnerable to injury, and methods that might accurately predict seizure episodes in advance are clearly of value, particularly to those who are resistant to other forms of therapy. In this thesis, we draw from the body of work behind automatic seizure prediction obtained from digitised Electroencephalography (EEG) data and use a selection of machine learning and data mining algorithms and techniques in an attempt to explore potential directions of improvement for automatic prediction of epileptic seizures. We start by adopting a set of EEG features from previous work in the field (Costa et al. 2008) and exploring these via seizure classification and feature selection studies on a large dataset. Guided by the results of these feature selection studies, we then build on Costa et al's work by presenting an expanded feature-set for EEG studies in this area. Next, we study the predictability of epileptic seizures several minutes (up to 25 minutes) in advance of the physiological onset. Furthermore, we look at the role of the various feature compositions on predicting epileptic seizures well in advance of their occurring. We focus on how predictability varies as a function of how far in advance we are trying to predict the seizure episode and whether the predictive patterns are translated across the entire dataset. Finally, we study epileptic seizure detection from a multiple-patient perspective. This entails conducting a comprehensive analysis of machine learning models trained on multiple patients and then observing how generalisation is affected by the number of patients and the underlying learning algorithm. Moreover, we improve multiple-patient performance by applying two state of the art machine learning algorithms

Epilepsy

Epilepsy is the most common neurological disorder globally, affecting approximately 50 million people of all ages. It is one of the oldest diseases described in literature from remote ancient civilizations 2000-3000 years ago. Despite its long history and wide spread, epilepsy is still surrounded by myth and prejudice, which can only be overcome with great difficulty. The term epilepsy is derived from the Greek verb epilambanein, which by itself means to be seized and to be overwhelmed by surprise or attack. Therefore, epilepsy is a condition of getting over, seized, or attacked. The twelve very interesting chapters of this book cover various aspects of epileptology from the history and milestones of epilepsy as a disease entity, to the most recent advances in understanding and diagnosing epilepsy

Leveraging Artificial Intelligence to Improve EEG-fNIRS Data Analysis

La spectroscopie proche infrarouge fonctionnelle (fNIRS) est apparue comme une technique de neuroimagerie qui permet une surveillance non invasive et à long terme de l'hémodynamique corticale. Les technologies de neuroimagerie multimodale en milieu clinique permettent d'étudier les maladies neurologiques aiguës et chroniques. Dans ce travail, nous nous concentrons sur l'épilepsie - un trouble chronique du système nerveux central affectant près de 50 millions de personnes dans le monde entier prédisposant les individus affectés à des crises récurrentes. Les crises sont des aberrations transitoires de l'activité électrique du cerveau qui conduisent à des symptômes physiques perturbateurs tels que des changements aigus ou chroniques des compétences cognitives, des hallucinations sensorielles ou des convulsions de tout le corps. Environ un tiers des patients épileptiques sont récalcitrants au traitement pharmacologique et ces crises intraitables présentent un risque grave de blessure et diminuent la qualité de vie globale. Dans ce travail, nous étudions 1. l'utilité des informations hémodynamiques dérivées des signaux fNIRS dans une tâche de détection des crises et les avantages qu'elles procurent dans un environnement multimodal par rapport aux signaux électroencéphalographiques (EEG) seuls, et 2. la capacité des signaux neuronaux, dérivé de l'EEG, pour prédire l'hémodynamique dans le cerveau afin de mieux comprendre le cerveau épileptique. Sur la base de données rétrospectives EEG-fNIRS recueillies auprès de 40 patients épileptiques et utilisant de nouveaux modèles d'apprentissage en profondeur, la première étude de cette thèse suggère que les signaux fNIRS offrent une sensibilité et une spécificité accrues pour la détection des crises par rapport à l'EEG seul. La validation du modèle a été effectuée à l'aide de l'ensemble de données CHBMIT open source documenté et bien référencé avant d'utiliser notre ensemble de données EEG-fNIRS multimodal interne. Les résultats de cette étude ont démontré que fNIRS améliore la détection des crises par rapport à l'EEG seul et ont motivé les expériences ultérieures qui ont déterminé la capacité prédictive d'un modèle d'apprentissage approfondi développé en interne pour décoder les signaux d'état de repos hémodynamique à partir du spectre complet et d'une bande de fréquences neuronale codée spécifique signaux d'état de repos (signaux sans crise). Ces résultats suggèrent qu'un autoencodeur multimodal peut apprendre des relations multimodales pour prédire les signaux d'état de repos. Les résultats suggèrent en outre que des gammes de fréquences EEG plus élevées prédisent l'hémodynamique avec une erreur de reconstruction plus faible par rapport aux gammes de fréquences EEG plus basses. De plus, les connexions fonctionnelles montrent des modèles spatiaux similaires entre l'état de repos expérimental et les prédictions fNIRS du modèle. Cela démontre pour la première fois que l'auto-encodage intermodal à partir de signaux neuronaux peut prédire l'hémodynamique cérébrale dans une certaine mesure. Les résultats de cette thèse avancent le potentiel de l'utilisation d'EEG-fNIRS pour des tâches cliniques pratiques (détection des crises, prédiction hémodynamique) ainsi que l'examen des relations fondamentales présentes dans le cerveau à l'aide de modèles d'apprentissage profond. S'il y a une augmentation du nombre d'ensembles de données disponibles à l'avenir, ces modèles pourraient être en mesure de généraliser les prédictions qui pourraient éventuellement conduire à la technologie EEG-fNIRS à être utilisée régulièrement comme un outil clinique viable dans une grande variété de troubles neuropathologiques.----------ABSTRACT Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) has emerged as a neuroimaging technique that allows for non-invasive and long-term monitoring of cortical hemodynamics. Multimodal neuroimaging technologies in clinical settings allow for the investigation of acute and chronic neurological diseases. In this work, we focus on epilepsy—a chronic disorder of the central nervous system affecting almost 50 million people world-wide predisposing affected individuals to recurrent seizures. Seizures are transient aberrations in the brain's electrical activity that lead to disruptive physical symptoms such as acute or chronic changes in cognitive skills, sensory hallucinations, or whole-body convulsions. Approximately a third of epileptic patients are recalcitrant to pharmacological treatment and these intractable seizures pose a serious risk for injury and decrease overall quality of life. In this work, we study 1) the utility of hemodynamic information derived from fNIRS signals in a seizure detection task and the benefit they provide in a multimodal setting as compared to electroencephalographic (EEG) signals alone, and 2) the ability of neural signals, derived from EEG, to predict hemodynamics in the brain in an effort to better understand the epileptic brain. Based on retrospective EEG-fNIRS data collected from 40 epileptic patients and utilizing novel deep learning models, the first study in this thesis suggests that fNIRS signals offer increased sensitivity and specificity metrics for seizure detection when compared to EEG alone. Model validation was performed using the documented open source and well referenced CHBMIT dataset before using our in-house multimodal EEG-fNIRS dataset. The results from this study demonstrated that fNIRS improves seizure detection as compared to EEG alone and motivated the subsequent experiments which determined the predictive capacity of an in-house developed deep learning model to decode hemodynamic resting state signals from full spectrum and specific frequency band encoded neural resting state signals (seizure free signals). These results suggest that a multimodal autoencoder can learn multimodal relations to predict resting state signals. Findings further suggested that higher EEG frequency ranges predict hemodynamics with lower reconstruction error in comparison to lower EEG frequency ranges. Furthermore, functional connections show similar spatial patterns between experimental resting state and model fNIRS predictions. This demonstrates for the first time that intermodal autoencoding from neural signals can predict cerebral hemodynamics to a certain extent. The results of this thesis advance the potential of using EEG-fNIRS for practical clinical tasks (seizure detection, hemodynamic prediction) as well as examining fundamental relationships present in the brain using deep learning models. If there is an increase in the number of datasets available in the future, these models may be able to generalize predictions which would possibly lead to EEG-fNIRS technology to be routinely used as a viable clinical tool in a wide variety of neuropathological disorders