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

Automatic Detection and Classification of Neural Signals in Epilepsy

The success of an epilepsy treatment, such as resective surgery, relies heavily on the accurate identification and localization of the brain regions involved in epilepsy for which patients undergo continuous intracranial electroencephalogram (EEG) monitoring. The prolonged EEG recordings are screened for two main biomarkers of epilepsy: seizures and interictal spikes. Visual screening and quantitation of these two biomarkers in voluminous EEG recordings is highly subjective, labor-intensive, tiresome and expensive. This thesis focuses on developing new techniques to detect and classify these events in the EEG to aid the review of prolonged intracranial EEG recordings. It has been observed in the literature that reliable seizure detection can be made by quantifying the evolution of seizure EEG waveforms. This thesis presents three new computationally simple non-patient-specific (NPS) seizure detection systems that quantify the temporal evolution of seizure EEG. The first method is based on the frequency-weighted-energy, the second method on quantifying the EEG waveform sharpness, while the third method mimics EEG experts. The performance of these new methods is compared with that of three state-of-the-art NPS seizure detection systems. The results show that the proposed systems outperform these state-of-the-art systems. Epilepsy therapies are individualized for numerous reasons, and patient-specific (PS) seizure detection techniques are needed not only in the pre-surgical evaluation of prolonged EEG recordings, but also in the emerging neuro-responsive therapies. This thesis proposes a new model-based PS seizure detection system that requires only the knowledge of a template seizure pattern to derive the seizure model consisting of a set of basis functions necessary to utilize the statistically optimal null filters (SONF) for the detection of the subsequent seizures. The results of the performance evaluation show that the proposed system provides improved results compared to the clinically-used PS system. Quantitative analysis of the second biomarker, interictal spikes, may help in the understanding of epileptogenesis, and to identify new epileptic biomarkers and new therapies. However, such an analysis is still done manually in most of the epilepsy centers. This thesis presents an unsupervised spike sorting system that does not require a priori knowledge of the complete spike data

29th Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting: CNS*2020

Meeting abstracts This publication was funded by OCNS. The Supplement Editors declare that they have no competing interests. Virtual | 18-22 July 202