METHODS FOR AUTOMATIC ESTIMATION OF THE NUMBER OF CLUSTERS FOR K-MEANS ALGORITHM USED ON EEG SIGNAL: FEASIBILITY STUDY

Lots of brain diseases are recognized by EEG recording. EEG signal has a stochastic character, this stochastic nature makes the evaluation of EEG recording complicated. Therefore we use automatic classification methods for EEG processing. This methods help the expert to find significant or physiologically important segments in the EEG recording. The k-means algorithm is a frequently used method in practice for automatic classification. The main disadvantage of the k-means algorithm is the necessary determination of the number of clusters. So far there are many methods which try to determine optimal number of clusters for k-means algorithm. The aim of this study is to test functionality of the two most frequently used methods on EEG signals, concretely the elbow and the silhouette method. In this feasibility study we compared the results of both methods on simulated data and real EEG signal. We want to prove with the help of an expert the possibility to use these functions on real EEG signal. The results show that the silhouette method applied on EEG recordings is more time-consuming than the elbow method. Neither of the methods is able to correctly recognize the number of clusters in the EEG record by expert evaluation and therefore it is not applicable to the automatic classification of EEG based on k-means algorithm

AUTOMATIC EEG CLASSIFICATION USING DENSITY BASED ALGORITHMS DBSCAN AND DENCLUE

Electroencephalograph (EEG) is a commonly used method in neurological practice. Automatic classifiers (algorithms) highlight signal sections with interesting activity and assist an expert with record scoring. Algorithm K-means is one of the most commonly used methods for EEG inspection. In this paper, we propose/apply a method based on density-oriented algorithms DBSCAN and DENCLUE. DBSCAN and DENCLUE separate the nested clusters against K-means. All three algorithms were validated on a testing dataset and after that adapted for a real EEG records classification. 24 dimensions EEG feature space were classified into 5 classes (physiological, epileptic, EOG, electrode, and EMG artefact). Modified DBSCAN and DENCLUE create more than two homogeneous classes of the epileptic EEG data. The results offer an opportunity for the EEG scoring in clinical practice. The big advantage of the proposed algorithms is the high homogeneity of the epileptic class

Measuring the Physical Activity of Seniors before and during COVID-19 Restrictions in the Czech Republic

Social workers require a better understanding of the impact of pandemic measures on the level of physical activity of their clients to better target client activation. In this retrospective tracker-based study (two years of measurement), we examined changes in the physical activity of the elderly population (204 participants with an average age of 84.5 years) in the Czech Republic as a result of measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Physical activity was statistically compared according to the physical, demographic and social conditions of the participants. In addition to observing the expected activity decrease during the COVID-19 pandemic, we made several hypotheses based on the sex, age group, body mass index, type of housing (apartment or house) and size of the city of residence. We found that 33% of the 204 participants had increased levels of physical activity in the period following the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak in Central Europe. We found that the size of the city where the seniors lived and the type of housing did not affect the general level of physical activity. When comparing physical acquisition rates in each month of 2019 and 2020, we saw the largest declines in April and May 2020, that is, one month after the start of the lockdown

Closed‐loop auditory stimulation of slow‐wave sleep in chronic insomnia: a pilot study

Insomnia is a prevalent and disabling condition whose treatment is not always effective. This pilot study explores the feasibility and effects of closed-loop auditory stimulation (CLAS) as a potential non-invasive intervention to improve sleep, its subjective quality, and memory consolidation in patients with insomnia. A total of 27 patients with chronic insomnia underwent a crossover, sham-controlled study with 2 nights of either CLAS or sham stimulation. Polysomnography was used to record sleep parameters, while questionnaires and a word-pair memory task were administered to assess subjective sleep quality and memory consolidation. The initial analyses included 17 patients who completed the study, met the inclusion criteria, and received CLAS. From those, 10 (58%) received only a small number of stimuli. In the remaining seven (41%) patients with sufficient CLAS, we evaluated the acute and whole-night effect on sleep. CLAS led to a significant immediate increase in slow oscillation (0.5–1 Hz) amplitude and activity, and reduced delta (1–4 Hz) and sigma/sleep spindle (12–15 Hz) activity during slow-wave sleep across the whole night. All these fundamental sleep rhythms are implicated in sleep-dependent memory consolidation. Yet, CLAS did not change sleep-dependent memory consolidation or sleep macrostructure characteristics, number of arousals, or subjective perception of sleep quality. Results showed CLAS to be feasible in patients with insomnia. However, a high variance in the efficacy of our automated stimulation approach suggests that further research is needed to optimise stimulation protocols to better unlock potential CLAS benefits for sleep structure and subjective sleep quality in such clinical settings