A patient-independent classification system for onset detection of seizures

Seizures are the most common brain dysfunction. Electroencephalography (EEG) is required for their detection and treatment initially. Studies show that if seizures are detected at their early stage, instant and effective treatment can be given to the patients. In this paper, an automated system for seizure onset detection is proposed. As the power spectrum of normal person's EEG and EEG of someone with epilepsy is plotted, powers present at different frequencies are found to be different for both. The proposed algorithm utilizes this frequency discrimination property of EEG with some statistical features to detect the seizure onset using simple linear classifier. The tests conducted on EEG data of 30 patients, obtained from the two different datasets, show the presence of all 183 seizures with mean latency of 0.9 s and 1.02 false detections per hour. The main contribution of this study is the use of simple features and classifier in the field of seizures onset detection that reduces the computational complexity of the algorithm. Also, the classifier used is patient independent. This patient independency in the classification system would be helpful in the implementation of the proposed algorithm to develop an online detection system.