Prediction and detection of human epileptic seizures based on SIFT-MS chemometric data

Although epilepsy is considered a public health issue, the burden imposed by the unpredictability of seizures is mainly borne by the patients. Predicting seizures based on electroencephalography has had mixed success, and the idiosyncratic character of epilepsy makes a single method of detection or prediction for all patients almost impossible. To address this problem, we demonstrate herein that epileptic seizures can not only be detected by global chemometric analysis of data from selected ion flow tube mass spectrometry but also that a simple mathematical model makes it possible to predict these seizures (by up to 4 h 37 min in advance with 92% and 75% of samples correctly classified in training and leave-one-out-cross-validation, respectively). These findings should stimulate the development of non-invasive applications (e.g., electronic nose) for different types of epilepsy and thereby decrease of the unpredictability of epileptic seizures.