Predictive detection of epileptic seizures in EEG for reactive care

Abstract: It is estimated that 65 million people worldwide have epilepsy, and many of them have uncontrollable seizures even with the use of medication. A seizure occurs when the normal electrical activity of the brain is interrupted by sudden and unusually intense bursts of electrical energy, and these bursts can be observed and detected by the use of an electroencephalograph (EEG) machine. This work presents an algorithm that monitors subtle changes in scalp EEG characteristics to predict seizures. The algorithm is built to calibrate itself to every specifc patient based on recorded data, and is computationally effcient enough for future on-line applications. The presented algorithm performs ICA-based artifact filtering and Lasso-based feature selection from a large array of statistical features. Classification is based on a neural network using Bayesian regularized backpropagation.The selected method was able to classify 4 second long preictal segments with an average sensitivity of 99.53% and an average specificity of 99.9% when tested on 15 different patients from the CHB-MIT database.