Spindler: a framework for parametric analysis and detection of spindles in EEG with application to sleep spindles

EEG spindles, narrow-band oscillatory signal bursts, are widely-studied biomarkers of subject state and neurological function. Most existing methods for spindle detection select algorithm parameters by optimizing agreement with expert labels. We propose a new framework for selecting algorithm parameters based on stability of spindle properties and elucidate the dependence of these properties on parameter selection for several algorithms.

To demonstrate this approach we developed a new algorithm (Spindler) that decomposes the signal using matching pursuit with Gabor atoms and computes the spindles for each point in a fine grid of parameter values. After computing characteristic surfaces as a function of parameters, Spindler selects algorithm parameters based on the stability of characteristic surface geometry.

Spindler performs well relative to several common supervised and unsupervised EEG sleep spindle detection methods. Spindler is available as an open-source MATLAB toolbox (https://github.com/VisLab/EEG-Spindles). In addition to Spindler, the toolbox provides implementations of several other spindle detection algorithms as well as standardized methods for matching ground truth to predictions and a framework for understanding algorithm parameter surfaces.

This work demonstrates that parameter selection based on physical constraints rather than labelled data can provide effective, fully-automated, unsupervised spindle detection. This work also exposes the dangers of applying cross-validation without considering the dependence of spindle properties on parameters. Parameters selected to optimize one performance metric or matching method are not optimized for others. Furthermore, elucidation of the stability of predicted indicators with respect to algorithm parameter selection is critical to practical application of these algorithms.