Dimension reduction methods, persistent homology and machine learning for EEG signal analysis of Interictal Epileptic Discharges

Recognizing specific events in medical data requires trained personnel. To aid the classification, machine learning algorithms can be applied. In this context, medical records are usually high-dimensional, although a lower dimension can also reflect the dynamics of the signal. In this study, electroencephalogram data with Interictal Epileptic Discharges (IEDs) are investigated. First, the dimensions are reduced using Dynamical Component Analysis (DyCA) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA), respectively. The reduced data are examined using topological data analysis (TDA), specifically using a persistent homology algorithm. The persistent homology results are used for targeted feature generation. The features are used to train and evaluate a Support Vector Machine (SVM) to distinguish IEDs from background activities.

Ongoing EEG artifact correction using blind source separation

Objective: Analysis of the electroencephalogram (EEG) for epileptic spike and seizure detection or brain-computer interfaces can be severely hampered by the presence of artifacts. The aim of this study is to describe and evaluate a fast automatic algorithm for ongoing correction of artifacts in continuous EEG recordings, which can be applied offline and online. Methods: The automatic algorithm for ongoing correction of artifacts is based on fast blind source separation. It uses a sliding window technique with overlapping epochs and features in the spatial, temporal and frequency domain to detect and correct ocular, cardiac, muscle and powerline artifacts. Results: The approach was validated in an independent evaluation study on publicly available continuous EEG data with 2035 marked artifacts. Validation confirmed that 88% of the artifacts could be removed successfully (ocular: 81%, cardiac: 84%, muscle: 98%, powerline: 100%). It outperformed state-of-the-art algorithms both in terms of artifact reduction rates and computation time. Conclusions: Fast ongoing artifact correction successfully removed a good proportion of artifacts, while preserving most of the EEG signals. Significance: The presented algorithm may be useful for ongoing correction of artifacts, e.g., in online systems for epileptic spike and seizure detection or brain-computer interfaces.

Orthogonal Extended Infomax Algorithm

The extended infomax algorithm for independent component analysis (ICA) can separate sub- and super-Gaussian signals but converges slowly as it uses stochastic gradient optimization. In this paper, an improved extended infomax algorithm is presented that converges much faster. Accelerated convergence is achieved by replacing the natural gradient learning rule of extended infomax by a fully-multiplicative orthogonal-group based update scheme of the unmixing matrix leading to an orthogonal extended infomax algorithm (OgExtInf). Computational performance of OgExtInf is compared with two fast ICA algorithms: the popular FastICA and Picard, a L-BFGS algorithm belonging to the family of quasi-Newton methods. Our results demonstrate superior performance of the proposed method on small-size EEG data sets as used for example in online EEG processing systems, such as brain-computer interfaces or clinical systems for spike and seizure detection.