Characterization of complexity in the electroencephalograph activity of Alzheimer's disease based on fuzzy entropy

In this paper, experimental neurophysiologic recording and statistical analysis are combined to investigate the nonlinear characteristic and the cognitive function of the brain. Fuzzy approximate entropy and fuzzy sample entropy are applied to characterize the model-based simulated series and electroencephalograph (EEG) series of Alzheimer's disease (AD). The effectiveness and advantages of these two kinds of fuzzy entropy are first verified through the simulated EEG series generated by the alpha rhythm model, including stronger relative consistency and robustness. Furthermore, in order to detect the abnormality of irregularity and chaotic behavior in the AD brain, the complexity features based on these two fuzzy entropies are extracted in the delta, theta, alpha, and beta bands. It is demonstrated that, due to the introduction of fuzzy set theory, the fuzzy entropies could better distinguish EEG signals of AD from that of the normal than the approximate entropy and sample entropy. Moreover, the entropy values of AD are significantly decreased in the alpha band, particularly in the temporal brain region, such as electrode T3 and T4. In addition, fuzzy sample entropy could achieve higher group differences in different brain regions and higher average classification accuracy of 88.1% by support vector machine classifier. The obtained results prove that fuzzy sample entropy may be a powerful tool to characterize the complexity abnormalities of AD, which could be helpful in further understanding of the disease.